Bad Therapist

Rachel and Ash peer into the soul of Phil McGraw, Oprah's favorite straight-talking daytime TV guru, who has more recently pivoted to pro-ICE content creator. Folksy animal metaphors abound. Sources: Phil McGraw, Self Matters: Creating Your Life From the Inside Out, https://shop.drphil.com/products/book-self-matters-creating-your-life-from-the-inside-out-studio Sophia Dembling & Lisa Gutierrez, The Making of Dr Phil: The Straight-Talking True Story of Everyone's Favorite Therapist, https://www.strandbooks.com/the-making-of-dr-phil-the-straight-talking-true-story-of-everyone-s-favorite-therapist-9780471696599.html David Armstrong and Evan Allen, "Dr. Phil says he rescues people from addiction. Others say his show puts guests' health at risk," Stat News & Boston Globe - https://www.statnews.com/2017/12/28/dr-phil-guests-say-show-risks-health-of-some-addicts/ David Armstrong and Evan Allen, "How Dr. Phil's new addiction recovery venture trades on his TV show's marketing clout," Stat News & Boston Globe - https://www.statnews.com/2017/12/29/dr-phil-path-to-recovery/ Scaachi Koul, "Dr. Do Nothing," BuzzFeed News - https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/scaachikoul/dr-phil-mcgraw-mental-health-danielle-bregoli Dennis Cass, "Dr. Phil Is a Softie," Slate - https://slate.com/culture/2003/10/dr-phil-s-fat-fighting-crusade.html David K. Li, Janhvi Bhojwani and Toby Lyles, "How 'Dr. Phil' suddenly became so outspoken about immigration," NBC - https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/dr-phil-immigration-ice-raids-rcna189691 Nitish Pahwa, "Just What the Doctor Ordered," Slate - https://slate.com/business/2025/10/dr-phil-mcgraw-donald-trump-merit-media-maga.html Lisa de Moraes, "On Dr. Phil, a Dose of Bad Medicine?" Washington Post - https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A63905-2004Sep30.html Matt Flegenheimer, "Dr. Phil's Road From Oprah to ICE Raids," New York Times - https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/10/style/dr-phils-road-from-oprah-to-ice-raids.html Merit Street Media YouTube - https://www.youtube.com/@newsonmeritstreet/videos Eric Rasmussen & David Ewoldsen, "Treatment via Television: The Relation Between Watching Dr. Phil and Viewers' Intentions to Seek Mental Health Treatment," Journal of Health Communication - https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/10810730.2015.1114054 Colton Wooten, "My Years in the Florida Shuffle of Drug Addiction," New Yorker - https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2019/10/21/my-years-in-the-florida-shuffle-of-drug-addiction Teen Torture, Inc. HBO - https://play.hbomax.com/show/6e25d97c-26ec-439b-83ef-6b3cca5af597

Rachel and Ash venture into the world of neuro-linguistic programming, trying (and failing) to use word-spells to get everything they've ever wanted. Content warning: NXIVM, murder, pick-up artists. Sources: Frank Clancy & Heidi Yorkshire, "The Bander Method" - Mother Jones, Feb/Mar 1989 https://books.google.com/books?id=DOcDAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA22#v=onepage&q&f=false Robert S. Spitzer, "Virginia Satir & Origins of NLP" - https://www.social-engineer.org/wiki/archives/NLP/NLP-Satir395.pdf Tomasz Witkowski, "Thirty-Five Years of Research on Neuro-Linguistic Programming. NLP Research Data Base. State of the Art or Pseudoscientific Decoration?" Polish Psychological Bulletin - https://philpapers.org/rec/WITTYO Richard Wiseman, et al., "The Eyes Don't Have It: Lie Detection and Neuro-Linguistic Programming," PLoS ONE - https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0040259 Terrence McClendon, The Wild Days: NLP 1972-1981 - https://archive.org/details/wilddays0000mccl Toni Natalie & Chet Hardin, The Program: Inside the Mind of Keith Raniere and the Rise and Fall of NXIVM - https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-program-inside-the-mind-of-keith-raniere-and-the-rise-and-fall-of-nxivm-chet-hardin/6d3afa01e96ff5ad Ross Jeffries, How To Get the Women You Desire Into Bed - https://www.maerivoet.org/website/links/miscellaneous/speed-seduction-book/resources/speed-seduction-book.pdf Neil Strauss, The Game: Penetrating the Secret Society of Pickup Artists - https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-game-penetrating-the-secret-society-of-pickup-artists-neil-strauss/659bc135ee8fb93e Louis Theroux Tests out Hypnotic Dating - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xn_oqEOtLYU

Rachel and Ash discuss the astonishing abundance of coaches via an exploration of The Life Coach School, a glossy (and expensive!) program with some MLM-esque overtones. SOURCES: - I'm a Life Coach, You're a Life Coach: The Rise of an Unregulated Industry - https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2021/oct/06/life-coaching-brooke-castillo-unregulated-industry - LifeCoachSnark subreddit - https://www.reddit.com/r/LifeCoachSnark/ - The Dream podcast - season 3 - https://www.pushkin.fm/podcasts/the-dream - The Life Coach School - https://www.thelifecoachschool.com/ - The Life Coach School podcast - https://www.thelifecoachschool.com/podcast - Live Coaching Highlights with Brooke Castillo - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U0Pc4CXBMiU&t - The International Coaching Federation - https://coachingfederation.org/ Produced by Zoe Kurland. Music by Flock of Dimes.

Rachel & Ash discuss the Sullivanians/Fourth Wall community, a collective of self-credentialed therapists with great real estate and solid politics that, can you believe it, turned into something pretty sinister. SOURCES: -The Sullivanians: Sex, Psychotherapy, and the Wild Life of an American Commune by Alexander Stille - https://bookshop.org/p/books/the-sullivanians-free-love-psychotherapy-and-the-wild-life-of-america-s-largest-urban-commune-alexander-stille/18789052 -The Sullivanians - Through a Blue Window podcast, by Shelley Feinerman https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-sullivanians-through-a-blue-window-c-2019/id1697359383 -https://www.nytimes.com/1972/09/24/archives/-good-me-or-bad-me-the-sullivan-approach-to-personality-starting.html (https://www.nytimes.com/1972/09/24/archives/-good-me-or-bad-me-the-sullivan-approach-to-personality-starting.html) - Crowley, R.M. (1971). *Notes on Sullivan's Approach to the Science of Man.* *Contemporary Psychoanalysis*, 8(1), 64–70. - Crowley, R.M. *Harry Stack Sullivan as Social Critic.* William Alanson White Institute of Psychiatry, New York. Produced by Zoe Kurland. Music by Flock of Dimes.

Welcome to Bad Therapist, a podcast about the shadow side of mental health, and the scammers and manipulators who reside there. Cads, opportunists, and charlatans have been a part of the world of psychology since the beginning; some of them have even made lasting contributions to the field. Bad Therapist delves into two centuries of sketchy behavior, spanning everything from questionable nineteenth-century hypnotists to the TikTok-famous therapy hustlers. At a moment when therapy speak has good mainstream attention and trauma is a national preoccupation, it's high time to examine the dark side of mental health. Hosted by Ash Compton (a psychotherapist) and Rachel Monroe (a journalist), both big fans of therapy and big critics of those who abuse its insights. Produced by Zoe Kurland. Music by Flock of Dimes.