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A couple of years ago, the actor and filmmakerJonah Hillmade a documentary about his psychiatrist,Phil Stutz.
They say I love you to each other.
They joke like immature schoolboys.
Stutz makes a crack about banging Hills mother.
At one point, Hill says his previous therapists kept him at a massive distance.
Stutz, charismatic and gruff, is different.
As he puts it in the film, he tells patients, Do what the fuck I tell you.
Do exactly what I tell you.
I guarantee youll feel better.
Cusack called him a wizard in the heart of the make-believe factory.
Given his clientele, Stutz has, perhaps inevitably, inspired depictions on the screen.
Last years feel-good Apple TV+ dramedyShrinkingwas loosely based on him.
Hill began seeing Stutz in 2017, three years before they started making the documentary.
Stutz helped him in part by giving him tools.
Stutz claims they can help patients access what he tends to describe as a higher world.
Some therapists were troubled by Hills film.
Wasnt the documentary itself a collaboration between the two men an example of that?
And the clients role in his own life would become secondary, she added.
They were mostly successful professionals, veterans of the search for mental well-being.
Theyd done 12-step programs and Landmark and a lot of therapy.
There was a whiff of cultish devotion in the cool mountain air.
She asked if Id been indoctrinated.
(In a positive way, she clarified.)
They dont make God or higher powers anything other than what youre making it, she said.
Sargeant met both men at a workshop Stutz gave in 2019.
Today, opportunities to learn from Stutz are rare.
At 77, he is semi-retired.
New patients, he told me, require too much energy.
(Michels, meanwhile, is 70 and was recently diagnosed with Lewy body dementia.)
They never lay out exactly how.
They write only that if people use their methods, they will become participants in the revitalization of society.
Now, their time was running out, and society was more fucked than ever.
He slipped into the room and sat near the door without announcing himself.
Sorry to make a big deal of this, but Phil is here, she said.
Stutz waved a hand modestly at the cheering crowd.
After the mornings session ended, devotees surrounded him on the stone patio, pressing him for answers.
He felt dizzy and exhausted, but he couldnt leave now.
The Earth wont heal itself, he said.
Stutz lives and works out of an airy high-rise apartment in Century City.
A flag for Hills production company, Strong Baby, hangs over his bed.
A friend found and framed them a few years ago.
Freuds most original insight was that human behavior is ruled by unconscious fears and fantasies.
Youd send the patient out holding his dick, he told me.
You gave him nothing, and I just couldnt stand it.
Among the reasons for their split was Jungs interest in what Freud called the black tide of mysticism.
Picture standing onstage with your Shadow beside you, shouting at an audience.
So afraid of rejection you cant finish your screenplay?
If you suffer from self-loathing, Stutz recommends Grateful Flow, a three-stage process.
The first stage, listing the things you are thankful for, is a technique common among behavioral therapists.
The Source, he goes on to explain inThe Tools,created everything you’re free to see.
Most miraculously, it created life and it remains intimately involved with all the living beings it created.
The website forThe Toolsincludes 15 different exercises, but Stutz says he has developed as many as 50.
The Tools require faith, he told me.
There is no evidence that they work, but thats just the point.
Its not the specific Tools that cure you, Stutz cautioned.
This was a common misunderstanding.
What mattered was dedicating yourself to the Tools completely, until they became a sort of religion.
What cures you is a gestalt, he said.
An overall belief in something that cant be proven.
One essential difference, a key to his appeal, is how he says it.
Stutz is a Jewish New Yorker in his 70s and sounds like it.
Stutz grew up on the Upper West Side.
When he was 9, his 3-year-old brother died of a rare form of cancer.
His parents, atheists with limited emotional resources, were unequipped to handle the tragedy.
Stutz stepped in to fill the void.
My job was to reassure him, he said.
When Stutz was 16 or so, his father told him being a doctor was the only profession.
Applying to medical school didnt feel like a choice.
A lot of things that happened to me feel like theyre planned by somebody else, he said.
Stutz started seeing a psychotherapist after medical school.
Parting with Lowen was critical to his development.
I stopped listening to self-appointed authority figures, he said.
Soon after, he became one.
Stutz moved to L.A. in 1982, when he was 35.
To conserve energy, he had narrowed the scope of his life to sleep and work.
L.A. at the time, he said, was a very cold place.
If you didnt have close friends or family, you might as well have been on Mars.
But it was in L.A. that he found a clientele that was primed to understand his methods.
You do everything, I do nothing.
Within six weeks, Azaria said, his problem was solved.
Mark Kriegel, a writer, sometimes cooks pasta dinners for Stutz and drives them over to his apartment.
In recent sessions, John Stamos told me, he has started asking Stutz more about his own life.
Well spend 50 minutes talking about him, he said.
Stamos recalled grilling Stutz about Brad Grey, the late CEO of Paramount.
What would you tell Brad?
How was he so fucking powerful?
How was he so scary?
Stutzs assertiveness with his patients sometimes seemed to rub off on them.
They appreciated his focus on practical matters.
His philosophy, optimistic and oriented toward success, was focused on moving into the future.
Lets just get you on a road thats more positive and productive.
Despite his growing prestige, Stutz continued to live like a monk.
As his fame spread, he became more selective about whom he accepted as a patient.
He came into this world destitute.
He left the world destitute.
He didnt like power.
Stutz, by contrast, charges $700 an hour.
He described himself to me, in a self-deprecating way, as a mercenary.
I was surprised to hear him say this.
Perhaps this is why, despite his material success, Stutz said he long felt unfulfilled.
The things that were really important to me I failed at, basically, he told me.
He never married or had children.
Hed never managed to overcome that psychic block.
After the movie came out, he felt like his luck was finally changing.
I was in water, and it felt like it was rising, he said.
Strangers approached him on the street and told him he had saved their lives.
He felt an incredible surge of confidence in his crusade to bring his therapy to the world.
Im the best, he recalled thinking.
Im the most driven.
Its mine to accept responsibility for.Ive never had that feeling before.
The release of the film did more for Stutzs reputation than it did for his patients.
If she fails to change this behavior, he says, it will be a violation of his boundaries.
The leak of these messages prompted dozens of news stories, op-eds, and personal essays.
One headline read bluntly: Not all therapy is a force for good.
I give you exhibit A: the actor Jonah Hill.
Stutz was not particularly concerned by any of it.
Eventually, he made the connection: What, when the woman was attacking him?
He said he didnt pay attention to the press.
If he had shot somebody, I wouldnt be too upset, he said.
I dont want to judge myself by these outer results, he added.
He sank into the couch and gestured to the chair opposite him.
In our interviews, Stutz could be evasive.
He struggled to recall details, changed the subject, lost the thread of conversation, and contradicted himself.
But at some point in each meeting, a shift would occur.
When you get me in this setting, I turn into a different person, he agreed.
He said he becomes ruthless in his effort to create a connection with his patient.
During one of our conversations, he asked me about my Shadow.
As I began to describe the context, he interrupted.
I just want to say something first, he said.
He studied my face.
This is the most incredible session Ive ever had.
Not the content, he continued, shrugging.
Hed heard all that before, he said every variation of depravity and dysfunction.
He closed his eyes and paused, considering his words.
Its the courage and the power that comes out of your mouth.
I had a pretty good idea about this already.
Often, this meant dissecting the past.
Theres a gap between that and actually changing.
Stutz has claimed his own approach differs from the old therapies in one crucial respect: It works.
But if I dedicated myself to the Tools, I would be astonished by what I could accomplish.
My career would flourish.
My relationships would blossom.
My will would strengthen.
My life would change.
Of course, I wanted these things.
This is why someone goes to analysis four days a week.
But my analyst had never told me what to do to achieve them.
He offered no exercises.
He shared no vision for what my life should look like.
At times, it felt like wandering in the wilderness.
I could understand why Stutzs patients were drawn to him.
Still, there is a reason people go through a process like analysis.
He disagreed that this was a concern.
Any human endeavor needs leadership, he told me.
Up until that point, the sessions had been tightly structured.
Today, Stutz went off script.
He said hed been thinking lately about how everything is falling apart.
As hed done in his conversations with me, he paused to offer us some words of encouragement.
This is a very unusual group, he said.
Everybody is very kind and solicitous of everybody else here.
He looked around the room.
I dont know if any of you could feel it.
The group moves as a whole, and because it does, it can generate more firepower.
What we needed to do, he said, was harness that energy.
The next few minutes did not provide an answer as to how.
I had this vision, he continued.
Then this stuff starts to make more sense.
You dont have to answer it now.
But if we cant get you guys to do it, we cant get anybody to do it.
I looked around the room at the other attendees, their eyes closed in concentration.
Someone let out a whimper.
I need help, he said in a small voice.
It wasnt clear what was wrong.
People pushed back their chairs and rushed over to him from around the room.
They rubbed his back, brought him water.
They whispered into his ears and crouched at his feet.
When Stutz spoke again, his voice was weak and high-pitched, all the vitality drained out of it.
His ailment appeared to be spiritual, not physical.
Im just trying to bring myself to some kind of peace, he said.
On a normal scale of hierarchical accomplishment, Ive already won.
Theres nothing more to win.
He began talking about the ancient world.
He let out a sob.
I feel like Im flying in the wrong direction, he said.
As he spoke, his voice grew stronger.
you’ve got the option to talk about each one of these points for 100 years.
People around the room began to nod.
Michels suggested another meditation.
Dont resist any messages you receive, whatever they are, Michels said.
A man toward the back, a documentary filmmaker, raised his hand.
Thats what Im waiting for too, Michels said.
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