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    Get Real, Dr. Phil
    Get Real, Dr. Phil
    Get Real, Dr. Phil
    Ebook185 pages3 hours

    Get Real, Dr. Phil

    By Katherine Black

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    About this ebook

    "Get Real, Dr. Phil: Discrediting Television's Most Overrated Psychologist" is a satirical criticism of Dr. Phil McGraw and his pedestrian advice. I was kidnapped by terrorists, tied to a chair and forced to watch Dr. Phil's daytime TV program for more than three weeks before US commandos rescued me. Over the course of those three endless weeks, I decided that it was time someone put Dr. Phil and his simpleton recommendations in his place.

    While "Get Real, Dr. Phil: Discrediting Television's Most Overrated Psychologist" has an extensive amount of humor in it, including some R-rated content, I have attempted to offer actual insight and possible cures for some problems that plague our society, such as EMDR therapy.

    If Dr. Phil knew what he was doing, he would offer the same methods. But, alas, he doesn't even know of the possible cures I discuss. Combined with a short exposé of the McGraw family and its shady dealings at the end of the book, perhaps we can finally put Dr. Phil out to pasture for good.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKatherine Black
    Release dateSep 1, 2013
    ISBN9781301306220
    Get Real, Dr. Phil

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    • 1/5
      This book written against Dr Phil is a huge BORE
    • 1/5
      Wow a book that discredits another. Definitely not interested. Life is too complex to entertain any negatives.

      1 person found this helpful

    Book preview

    Get Real, Dr. Phil - Katherine Black

    Get Real, Dr. Phil

    Discrediting Television’s Most

    Overrated Psychologist

    * * * *

    By Katherine Black, B.S., M.S., Ph.D.*

    * * * *

    Get Real, Dr. Phil

    Discrediting Television’s Most Overrated Psychologist

    By Katherine Black, B.S., M.S., Ph.D.*

    Copyright 2013 by Katherine Black

    Smashwords Edition

    Cover caricature drawn by Nelson Santos

    Cover Design by Katie Brady

    Author’s vastly underused Twitter account where she can be reached: https://twitter.com/KB_Author

    Some names and identifying details have been changed to protect the privacy of individuals.

    Smashwords Edition, License Notes

    This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This eBook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this eBook with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

    Copyright 2013 Katherine Black. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce this eBook, or portions thereof, in any form. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, without the express written permission of the author. Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials.

    * * * *

    Other books by Katherine Black:

    Women May Be from Venus, But Men are Really from Uranus (2000)

    Edited Literary Works (all eBooks):

    The Right Has Never Been So Wrong, Part 1 (2011)

    The Right Has Never Been So Wrong, Part 2 (2011)

    I Love the Smell of Fascism in the Morning (2011)

    Books I Never Should Have Written:

    Jesus Is A Republican (2012)

    * * * *

    For Potter Sweetness

    * * * *

    Contents:

    Part One: An Introduction To Get Real, Dr. Phil And Eliminating Victimism

    1. Dr. Phil Is Not A Self-Help Doctor

    2. Why Should I Discredit Dr. Phil?

    3. Why Does Dr. Phil Encourage Victimism?

    Part Two: That’s Entertainment

    4. Marriage Retreats And Dr. Fortune Cookie

    5. He Really Said That? Part One

    6. On The Set With Dr. Phil

    7. He’s Just An Entertainer

    8. Confucius Had His Sweet 16 Rules For Success Too

    9. He Really Said That? Part Two

    Part Three: Wisdom

    10. A Double Standard For Men

    11. The Ultimate Common Sense Guide To Weight Loss In Fewer Than 2,263 Words

    12. Dr. Phil’s Seven Deadly Sins (And How He Can Fix Them)

    13. Another Double Standard: Verbal Abuse

    14. Bitterness And Why We Are Unable To Forgive

    15. Real Steps To Overcome Trauma

    16. Five Keys To A Fulfilled Life

    17. The Pity Party Is Over

    18. E Over I, Versus I Over E, And Emotional Intelligence

    Part Four: Disgrace

    19. The McGraw Family: Scandalous

    About The Author, Editor, Caricaturist And Cover Designer

    * * * *

    PART ONE:

    AN INTRODUCTION TO GET REAL, DR. PHIL

    AND ELIMINATING VICTIMISM

    * * * *

    CHAPTER 1

    DR. PHIL IS NOT A SELF-HELP DOCTOR

    Self-help authors and television pundits have the same agenda as modern medicine: to treat, not cure, because there’s more money to be made in treatment than in a cure. The last major disease medicine cured was polio and that was in 1957 (first tested by Dr. Jonas Salk on himself in 1952). Since that time, trillions of dollars have been spent to find cures for everything from AIDS to cancer to the common cold, but the only thing medicine can offer is treatment. If a disease were curable, gone would be the untold amounts profited from treatments, because once a disease is cured, no further care is necessary.

    The same is true for those seeking cures from emotional trauma. Cures exist (and a very effective cure for emotional trauma is presented in this book), but it’s more profitable to treat than to cure, and people don’t need to look any further than to Dr. Phil, to find a man bent on treating those who seek his help. A cure for emotional issues or relationship problems requires a figurative slap across the face or a swift kick in the butt to wake people up from their self-imposed stupors, but Dr. Phil’s treatment of such consists of coddling and, frankly, providing erroneous and useless guidance.

    This is actual advice from Dr. Phil:

    You cannot dodge responsibility for how and why your life is the way it is. If you don’t like your job, you are accountable. If you are overweight, you are accountable. If you are not happy, you are accountable.

    Okay, we admit that we are responsible and accountable for our actions. What do we do now? (Silence.)

    The late Henny Youngman used to tell this joke:

    A patient says, Doctor, it hurts when I do this.

    The doctor says, Then don’t do that.

    Dr. Phil would be the doctor in that joke: He can tell you the what (and usually what not to do), but he can’t tell you the why or how. Millions of people are happy enough to know the what and graze like cattle the rest of their lives, but millions more would like to know the why and how, and then take the necessary steps to better themselves. Dr. Phil’s advice is an overview of what’s wrong, with no realistic methods for eliminating most problems, except that which he and his family are more than happy to sell to gullible consumers who believe that because the title doctor precedes his name, he is qualified to make you feel better.

    He doesn’t have the first clue in his television show how to cure individual relationship or psychological issues, and his books are even worse: longwinded personal stories, followed by lists of things you should not be doing. A monkey on a typewriter could do that.

    Psychotherapists such as Dr. Phil do not write books to improve people nor for the betterment of society; they write to make money. They possess fame and realize that whatever they write will sell and they will make millions of dollars whether they help people or not. If they shit in a shoebox and called it a radical new therapy, it would sell because they’re famous. But would it actually accomplish anything other than stinking up a room?

    Fame is more a product of luck than anything else. Even fortuitous timing is luck, such as when Oprah Winfrey invited Dr. Phil on her program in the late nineties and his pitch resonated with the audience. Luck and skill – the legend of Dr. Phil was born, yet the man is a complete idiot and I say that in all sincerity. He is like a puffer fish, both figurative and literally. The puffer fish is the world’s second most poisonous vertebrate in the world, and listening to Dr. Phil’s absurd advice will only serve to poison your mind because people need to be told what to do to better themselves, instead of what not to do. Also, when a puffer fish is threatened, it will fill its elastic stomach with water to make it seem like it is several times larger than normal to any potential prey. Doesn’t that sound like Dr. Phil? He’s a big guy, with a booming voice, but it’s all for show. In his relationship with his wife Robin, she’s the one wearing the man pants.

    I’ve wasted countless hours watching Dr. Phil’s program on television and have seen other clips on YouTube, and Robin is in complete control. If Dr. Phil credits his wife for who he is today (and he does), it’s because she insisted on the acknowledgment. The one-finger-wave to her at the start of each program is particularly nauseating. In the entertainment and political vernacular, Robin is her husband’s handler, meaning she’s in charge. Her official website lists her as author, speaker and wife of Dr. Phil McGraw. It really should read domineering handler of her pussy-whipped husband, Dr. Phil. The only thing missing from her list of guest television appearances is a domestic violence episode of COPS. I’d love to see her in CSI: Beverly Hills, moments after she feeds Dr. Phil’s body into an extra large wood chipper.

    As Dr. Phil exits the stage at the end of his program and Robin joins him to walk into the proverbial sunset, she’s the one with her head held high, strutting off the set. I suspect that wieldy purse she swings around contains his testicles. Any man, who puffs himself up and pretends to know what to tell people suffering from emotional pain when he lacks any shred of common sense, is a man missing some basic components, and a man’s most basic components are his spunk holders.

    Viewers on YouTube and readers on other outlets routinely called Dr. Phil a mangina. Having never heard that term before, I consulted Webster’s dictionary and could not find a reference to it there. Perhaps it was misspelled? I then consulted the online Urban Dictionary and these are two of the definitions for a mangina:

    A man totally controlled by a woman

    A weak-willed man

    Using the word in a sentence:

    That mangina would never disobey his wife.

    That mangina just will not stand up for himself.

    Here are five reasons why people should read Katherine Black and not Dr. Mangina, er, Dr. Phil for practical, real-life advice:

    1. Guidance from an emasculated sanctimonious halfwit is not helpful.

    2. Even the weaker sex can benefit from my informed and experienced views.

    3. When I pull something out of my butt, my readers will know it’s crap.

    4. I say what works, not what you want to hear. (Useful advice isn’t always easy advice.)

    5. A little interjected humor now and then is beneficial with self-help books.

    My first book, Women May Be from Venus, But Men are Really from Uranus (2000) was a parody and a farce. I ridiculed John Gray’s relationship advice (Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus) by mocking his writing. Gray’s first book, and all his subsequent books, could have been published as a pamphlet. He was easy to ridicule up to a point, but when someone’s theme is a man is superior in all aspects of life, and a woman’s job is to be subservient to her husband while wrapped in the cloak of religious fundamentalism, it gets old pretty fast. Gray found a way to make the same point over the course of at least ten books, whereas I could only think of enough original humor to disparage his one point to fill about eighty pages.

    This book is different on several levels. Dr. Phil has an actual doctorate degree (which is not medical, for those who may be misled by the term doctor). However, he considers himself retired as a doctor, unlike many others in entertainment television who dish out advice without the benefit of doctorates or degrees in the field in which they purport to be experts, or who completed a curriculum from online correspondence courses. Online degree and certificate courses are similar to today’s organized youth sports, in which everyone receives a trophy just for showing up.

    Dr. Laura also comes to mind as a charlatan psychoanalyst; she possesses a Master’s and Ph.D. in physiology and her doctoral thesis was on insulin’s effects on laboratory rodents. It was only after she began to call women idiots on the radio and rose to fame with such offensiveness that she obtained a therapist’s license from the State of California. I don’t know if I want to take relationship advice from someone whose primary interest in college was to hang around vermin. She also studied rats.

    To write a sensible response to Dr. Phil’s preaching and worthless advice meant I had to do something so repugnant and distasteful that my walls are still stained from my projectile vomiting: I had to read his books and, God help me, watch his daytime television program. Fortunately for me, not much television viewing was required to understand the substance of Dr. Phil’s advice. It is either book-based, which is not necessarily helpful to ever-evolving real-life dilemmas, or he has a warped sense of reality in which he dispenses conflicting instruction that his semiliterate audience consumes like a box of Twinkies before being sent to fat camp.

    Dr. Phil’s books are now in a basket in my bathroom, because that’s where his advice belongs (and not just as a reference to extra toilet paper). If I’ve eaten bad shellfish and am having difficulty bringing it up, just a few pages of advice from Dr. Phil will have me puking in no time. Or if the problem is constipation, the remedy is just as easy as flipping through the pages because Dr. Phil’s opinions scare the crap out of me.

    Conversely, if I’m seeking a good chuckle, I simply need to read Dr. Phil’s weight loss advice. Considering he’s sold millions of books to the most morbidly obese population on Earth about how to successfully lose weight when he’s at least twenty pounds overweight himself is enough for hours of laughs.

    How could a man like Dr. Phil, whose claim to fame was his get real advice when he appeared on Oprah, make $80 million in 2009 when he can’t offer any important or practical instruction to anyone? Simple: He pretends his advice is real, and with Robin dictating the slick marketing and Hollywood packaging, this country’s population has been programmed to buy it without question or dissent. It’s like watching the nightly news: We believe it because we’ve been conditioned to trust what we see and hear on television.

    But

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