This morning I read about the late Dr. Joyce Brothers, and a couple of things struck me. First, I never realized she was such an academic with degrees from Cornell and Columbia, and that she actually did help people, including several suicidal callers to her early radio and TV programs. By the time I was aware of her, I thought of her as kind of a punchline ("hey, Dr. Joyce Brothers, flick that sweat ball off your nose...what are you trying to do, make me sick!!"), or doling out quips on The Hollywood Squares, or What's My Line?
It got me to thinking about my own psychologist, who bore more than a passing resemblance to Dr. Brothers, with her short blonde hair, prominent front teeth and droopy eyelids. Lowenstein, as I liked to refer to her when discussing my sessions (mostly with my sister) rented a series of small rooms on Manhattan's Upper West Side, each furnished with one chair, one well worn love seat, a couple of lamps, and an endless supply of Kleenex. Lowenstein was not her real name of course, but rather the name of the shrink played by Barbra Streisand in The Prince of Tides. It was just more fun to say Lowenstein, and besides, it was close enough to my doctor's actual name--they both ended in Stein.
I started seeing Dr. Lowenstein within about two weeks of seeing A Streetcar Named Desire on Broadway (see my earlier post "Jessica Lange Scares The Shit Out Of Me".) at the start of a long hot summer. I saw her off and on for almost ten years, but I never had a regular slot. She just always gave me her cancellations or if she knew someone with a regular slot was going to be out of town she'd pencil me in. Ten years and no slot of my own. Good thing I'm not the sensitive type.
For much of the time I went to see her, Dr. Lowenstein struck me as being completely bored during our sessions. As a former performer (and a writer), I couldn't help but worry that my stories weren't holding her interest. I did finally ask her about it once.
"It's not your job to entertain me," she said. "It doesn't matter if you repeat yourself and I hear the same story over and over again."
Ouch. Honestly, why didn't she just say, "I'm not bored." That would have been a lot more reassuring. But when she told me that she hated Ethel Merman and that she thought that Anne Meara looked and smelled like a bag lady when she ran into her in the fitting room at Loehmann's, well I knew then that our days together were numbered.
I looked her up today just for fun. Well, fun is a stretch, but out of curiosity I Googled her. Twice today I mistook pictures of Dr. Joyce Brothers for Dr. Lowenstein, that's how similar they are in appearance. I found this review of her services at one of those rate-your-doctor website: "Sour face. Sour advice. She is not helpful. Felt worse after seeing her, like I just walked into a rain cloud."
I don't want to minimize how she helped me to deal with anxiety, or how apparently revisiting the same themes in session after session allowed my heart to catch up with my head when it came to unresolved feelings of sadness and guilt surrounding my mother (yes, yes, I know I'm still visiting those themes here!) but when it was time to go, I was the one saying, "I'm sorry, our time is up, we'll have to stop now."
From time to time I've thought about starting up with another shrink, and I even tried it once for a few weeks several years ago. But it was like being half way through watching Gone With The Wind, only to have someone come in late and keep asking, "Wait, who is Ashley? What's that girl doing on the horse? Which one's Butterfly McQueen? Is she related to Steve?" It just took too much energy and time to go over territory that had already been covered...and scorched.
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