BODY & SOUL: Soundbites from a talk-show moralist

c. 1996 Religion News Service (Body & Soul is a regular column exploring the interplay between spirituality and psychology. Pythia Peay is the author of”Putting America on the Couch,”to be published by Riverhead Books in 1997.) (RNS)-Her manner is rude. She belittles those who turn to her for help. She lectures against the perils of […]

c. 1996 Religion News Service

(Body & Soul is a regular column exploring the interplay between spirituality and psychology. Pythia Peay is the author of”Putting America on the Couch,”to be published by Riverhead Books in 1997.)

(RNS)-Her manner is rude. She belittles those who turn to her for help. She lectures against the perils of morally bankrupt behavior. Divorce is not an option. Living together is”shacking up.”Sex before marriage is wrong.


Sound like a fire-and-brimstone preacher? Your bossy great-aunt?

No, this is Dr. Laura Schlessinger, who dishes out moral instruction to 10 million radio listeners across America. Current Arbitron ratings rank her syndicated radio show second only to Rush Limbaugh’s. Her two books,”How Could You Do That?!”and”Ten Stupid Things Women Do to Mess Up Their Lives,”both published by HarperCollins, are riding high on The New York Times bestseller list.

It seems there is no personal problem-divorce, infidelity, sexual dysfunction, even children’s birthday parties-for which Dr. Laura doesn’t have the answer.

And though she casts herself as a moral authority, Schlessinger is no minister, rabbi or nun. Her moral pronouncements are purely personal; she rarely refers to any religious or philosophical tradition.

She is not even a psychologist. She earned a doctoral degree in physiology-the biological study of living organisms-from Columbia University Medical School. She also holds a post-doctoral certification in marriage and family counseling from the state of California.

Schlessinger, to be fair, never refers to herself as a psychologist-saying instead that she”preaches, teaches and nags.”And the intimate nature of the problems she discusses often make her sound more authoritative than she actually is.

Consider the way Dr. Laura dealt with a woman who called recently saying that she found it difficult to enjoy sex with her husband.

After answering a few clinical questions about her sex life, the caller tearfully revealed that she had been sexually abused as a child. Schlessinger explained how, from a physiological point of view, an abused child might have feelings of sexual arousal, the memory of which might have contributed to her caller’s current problems with sex.


But did Dr. Laura respond with compassion? Did she advise the woman to consult a psychotherapist or spiritual counselor or recommend an appropriate book? Instead, she capped her mini-session with an exhortation that the caller let go of the past and fulfill her wifely duties.”You don’t heal yesterday by not enjoying today,”she said.

Such responses make some mental health professionals wonder if Dr. Laura’s shoot-from-the-hip moral pronouncements might cause more harm than good. Just because she sounds right, they say, doesn’t mean she is.

Schlessinger did not respond to several requests for interviews for this column, but a couple of real psychologists had plenty to say about her methods.

A credentialed psychologist would never handle problems the way Schlessinger does, says Dr. Lilli Friedland of Los Angeles, past president of the American Psychological Association’s division of media psychology.”In order to make a clinical intervention,”Friedland says,”a psychologist has to know the history of an individual. A five-minute introduction is not enough on which to base a diagnosis.” Most radio psychologists, Friedland contends, make clear that they are not doing individual therapy on the air. By citing current research rather than airing their own personal opinions, their goal is to help individuals make more informed choices and to increase their self-understanding.

Schlessinger’s fans accept her moralistic tone, says Friedland, because they like to be told that there’s an absolute right and wrong. In the confusing world we live in, she says, moral ambiguity makes people uncomfortable.

Schlessinger’s approach raises other concerns for Dr. Victoria Lee, a San Francisco psychologist who has done research on the phenomenon of radio therapists.”Real therapy doesn’t make good entertainment,”Lee says.”There would be too many silences. Instead of insisting on their own viewpoint, a good therapist asks a lot of questions.” Schlessinger has said that what she does is not mental health, but moral health. But what are the real consequences of these on-the-air moral judgments?


She may counsel a troubled couple to stay married, but doesn’t address the anger of an unhappily married spouse. She may urge a teen-ager upset about her mother’s live-in boyfriend to leave home, but doesn’t address the consequences. She may counsel the wife who was sexually abused as a child to get on with her life, but doesn’t address the roots of the woman’s anger and despair.

After Dr. Laura signs off, the experts caution, she will not be there to handle the anxieties that remain. It takes time, introspection, spiritual guidance and, sometimes, therapy to work through life’s problems.

A soundbite from a talk-show moralist just won’t do the job.

MJP END PEAY

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