Fired Up: A shrink's musings

By Patricia Farrell

Being in the field of psychology for over 30 years and having worked in just about every setting there is, I've seen, heard and wanted to say a lot. Now, I've brought a bit of it together to share with you as well as my private interviews with John Lennon, Isaac Asimov, a brief encounter with Jacqueline Susann and a few short articles I've written. Plus, I've enclosed numerous other things I've written, one even directly to Dr. Phil. I think you'll find "The Patient Who Would Never Leave" to be almost an Oprahesque story. It touched my heart as I hope it will yours.

I know you'll find the book not only interesting, but that it provide insight and provokes thought on your part. That's what writing is all about to me and it's NOT all psychology. How boring that would be. I do not find myself analyzing everything or everyone I see and that's where being in the field of psychology causes a bit of a problem; people expect it. No, fun is fun and I get paid for the rest, if I so choose. I also cannot tolerate the pompous and the "experts" I see on TV; all production, poor content. See if you agree. I will not be quieted.

As a former editor of Publishers Weekly I had extraordinary access to some of the most successful authors as well as, through my TV work, to people in the entertainment field. But first and foremost, I wanted to write a book that would provide a mix of interesting chapters on my experiences in two diverse worlds; publishing and psychology.

I am that most unusual of creatures, a native New Yorker, having grown up and received all my schooling in NYC. My degrees are from Queens College and two from New York University, so it's a city I love and which has given me much. It has also provided me with a certain perspective on things as well as a willingness to speak my mind. So be it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Patricia Farrell
• Release date: Oct 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9780988663145

Patricia Farrell

Dr. Patricia A. Farrell, a native New Yorker, is a licensed psychologist, author, former associate editor of both Publishers Weekly and King Features Syndicate, a former medical consultant for Social Security Disability Determinations, and educator who has appeared on national TV shows and in print media where she is sought for her opinions on stress, anxiety and mental illness. Her website (http://www.drfarrell.net) has long been a resource for consumers, students and professionals seeking a wide array of information on mental health issues.Dr. Farrell has held clinical positions at Mt. Sinai Medical Center in NYC where she was the national clinical monitor for a medication for Alzheimer’s disease. She has also served in large psychiatric hospitals and mental health centers and has been active in every area of mental health. Formerly the Health & Science Editor of Time/Warner Cable Ch. 10 in New Jersey and a professor of psychology on the community, undergraduate and graduate levels, she has also been a psychiatry preceptor at The University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey.She is a biographee in Who’s Who in the World, Who’s Who in America and was elected to The National Honor Society, received the Social Sciences Award from Queens College and has been a grantee for research on eating disorders in female teen athletes. Her specialties are in mental health and medical illness, stress and anxiety disorders.Dr. Farrell’s most recent books prior to Fired Up: A shrink's musings, include It’s Not All in Your Head: Anxiety, depression, mood swings and multiple sclerosis (Demos Health), and How to Be Your Own Therapist: A step-by-step guide to taking back your life (McGraw-Hill), was published in five editions and translated into French, Portuguese, and two dialects of Chinese and distributed around the world.http://patriciafarrell.us/

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About the author:

Dr. Patricia A. Farrell is the author of How to Be Your Own Therapist: A step-by-step guide to taking back your life, It's Not All in Your Head: Anxiety, Depression, Mood Swings and Multiple Sclerosis, Work Stress: How You Can Beat It, and A Social Security Disability Psychological Claims Handbook, a licensed psychologist, a WebMD psychologist expert, former medical consultant for Social Security Disability determinations, psychiatric researcher at Mt. Sinai Medical Center (NYC) and an educator who has appeared on such national TV shows as The Today Show, The View, Court TV, MSNBC, AC360, CNN, HLN, VH1, MTV, ABC World News, The O'Reilly Factor, and on international, regional and national syndicated radio.

Dr. Farrell's website (http://www.drfarrell.net) has long been a resource for consumers, students and professionals seeking a wide array of information on mental health issues. She also writes CEs for healthcare professionals, tweets (@drpatfarrell), has a YouTube channel (www.youtube.com/watch?v=JksRzFL7FI8) and is on Pinterest, Flickr and Vimeo. Dr. Farrell is also a biographee in Who's Who in the World, Who's Who in America and Who's Who of American Women.

Dr. Farrell is a member of The American Psychological Association, SAG-AFTRA, the National Honor Society, a former board member of the New Jersey Board of Psychological Examiners and former board member of Bergen Pines Hospital, NJ.

Preface

I'm a psychologist but I was a trade magazine editor before I achieved my professional independence. I've been in the psychology field for over 30 years now, so I've seen and heard a lot and I've found that writers and psychologists appear to have a lot in common; they both enjoy people watching and the many stories out there both real and fantasy. Often, personal experience enters into all of it and it is a privilege to share some of my thoughts on matters that I consider important as well as short articles and stories I have written over the years. They are based on some of my experiences with appropriate care to confidentiality.

Among the interviews that I have included in this book are several which I believe will be quite interesting to you. For example, the private interview that I had with John Lennon and Yoko Ono in Toronto, another private interview with Isaac Asimov and one with Alison Steele, the very famous girl radio DJ in New York City known simply as The Nightbird.

Although I never listened to Alison's radio show, which aired in those wee small hours of the morning, someone did send a digital file of one of her shows to me. The theme song? Sounds like Knights in White Satin by The Moody Blues to me. Want a taste? Here's a YouTube clip: http://bitly.com/10Fu1Uc and listening to it, I think you can understand how her fan base reacted to this incredible woman. She inspired many dreams, or so I've been told.

Then there was the brief and oh, so cool, and not in a good way, interaction with the best-selling author, Jacqueline Susann, also in Toronto. Remember her? She, of course, was the queen of pulp fiction having written The Love Machine (alleged to have been based on a Hollywood producer or advertising executive she knew) and Valley of the Dolls. She sold in the millions and I guess you'd have to call her the original on which all the current queens of pulp have based their books. The first book she ever wrote was based on her poodle and it was titled, Every Night, Josephine.

BTW, I have heard that it was the publishing companies' practice to pulp up to 80% of the production run of a paperback book in her day. So what did production runs of 80K mean, anyway, if just 20% of it was actually moved in bookstores? True or not, that's an awful lot of trees. I've included a short article that I had written on this meeting a number of years after our encounter.

Yes, I enjoy laughing as much as anyone else and I'm not dreadfully lacking in fire in the belly as I've found so many people in my profession to be. I really dislike pompous, look-down-their-noses people who think their degrees have given them something akin to a gift from Mount Olympus or the Oracle of Delphi. I find them limited in their stringent and childish adherence to dogma and I know they won't like my saying that.

I bear the fire of prior generations in my tissues just as surely as I bear the color eyes their gifts willed to me even before I was born. I find terribly analytic people stuffy and I don't go to parties or any others social gatherings to analyze anyone or anything. If I did, it would be in an office where I'd get paid for my efforts.

Never tell anyone you're a psychologist when you meet them at a social gathering because it can set off unseen forces you won't want to endure. Tell them you make bird houses or you enjoy painting or something else, but never, never tell them you are a psychologist. I've had too many people reply with, Now I suppose you're going to analyze me. No. I don't analyze anyone because that's not my orientation anyway and why would I want to do that somewhere I expect to be allowed to enjoy just being in the company of others?

Sometimes, without any warning, I've served as the surrogate object of someone's wrath against a former therapist. I've been called names I didn't deserve and have had to defend myself against these verbal tirades and, as gingerly as possible, step away from the person launching the attack. Greedy is one of the words they often use and that is undeserved in my case. No, I won't go into it. Let's just leave it at that.

I never joined the profession in its let's-make-lots-of-money heyday. I've heard doctoral students indicate that's the reason they were going into psychology and, to me, it was a very poor reason. Would these students be good psychologists or just in it for the money? The fee you pay is never a guarantee of anything. It just means you're paying a lot of money—maybe more than the therapist deserves. Be forewarned.

I enjoy laughter and nonsense as much as anyone and that's why, often, you'll find me poking fun at my profession or myself. I can take it and I should be able to because I've dished enough of it out to others. Fair is fair.

I hope you find this book provides the beginning of a personal journey of exploration of life and the potential in it. If it makes you think a bit more about something, good. If it makes you laugh, even better. Laughter is a great medicine and I believe in prescribing (although technically I cannot prescribe) lots of it.

A John Lennon interview

Paul McCartney, Ringo Starr, and George Harrison, aka The Beatles, have recorded a new hit song with a man who has been dead for 15 years. If that doesn't smack of high-tech, nothing does. The release of the new song and the new-found interest in The Beatles led me to thinking about the time I had an unexpected private interview with John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Once upon another lifetime, I worked for a major US publishing magazine and I decided that we weren't giving enough attention to the publishers to the north of us; the Canadians. I began attending a yearly meeting of Canadian publishers and on one of my first visits I was booked into the same hotel as John Lennon and Yoko Ono.

Lennon had just published a book and I thought it might be fun to get an interview for the magazine. How do you get an interview with a rock superstar when everyone in Toronto is clamoring for five minutes with them? Well, if you're inordinately lucky, you have a relative who is a very good friend of a close friend of theirs. Follow? Then you take a large measure of chutzpah, pen an anything-but-memorable note which states that your relative, friend of so-and-so, says hello. You leave it with the clerk at the desk and go to your room.

A few hours later, the phone rang and a man with a strong British accent asked, Would you like to come up to the suite to talk to John? Could there have been any question?

They decided that I could come up later in the afternoon and I grabbed for a Toronto yellow pages to look up photographers. I can't imagine what the photographer I called thought when I told him that I had an exclusive interview with John Lennon, wanted him to meet me in the lobby and not to tell anyone. He agreed and an hour later I met someone I didn't know and had no idea whether he could use a camera or not and we went up to the suite.

I knew the popularity of The Beatles, but I wasn't prepared for what met us when the elevator door opened on the floor where Lennon had his suite. Wall to wall screaming girls, who couldn't have been any older than 12 or 13, packed the hall and we literally had to wade our way through as they begged for us to take them in with us.

The door was opened by someone, I don't know who, and then the fellow who had called, Derek Taylor, introduced himself and led us into a room where a table, complete with white tablecloth, had been set up. On top of it were bottles of Coke and a pot of tea. Over in the corner, near the windows, stood a man in a dreadful dark green silk suit (Alan Klein?) who looked at us with all the enthusiasm of a sated turtle in a dry tank.

We sat, the photographer fiddled with his equipment and the man still stood sullenly in the corner, looking out the window and occasionally looking around at us. A camera crew with a mini-cam began filming and Derek explained that they were filming everything on this trip. John was thinking of making a film of it all. So, I was immortalized in film with John Lennon and Yoko Ono and the gang and God knows where it's lying today. Probably in someone's trunk waiting to be rediscovered by someone looking for something else. Clear on that one? Who knows what happened.

Without any notice, like trumpets or an announcement or something, John stepped into the room, followed by Yoko. I looked at him with his long hair and round glasses and impeccable white pants and shirt and all I could think was, He's not tall. He's very thin and not tall.

I didn't know what he'd be like and, not being a Beatles fan, I thought the worst. He faked me out. Coming over, he said, How do you do. So nice of you to come. Then he offered me a Coke or some tea and I found I wasn't prepared for this interview. Somehow, I thought it would flow, that he would talk and talk as everyone always did and all I would have to do is take some of the really good quotes down.

He waited and as he did, I noticed how attentive he was to Yoko. How he touched her hair—that explosion of hair that seemed to stand out from her head. Where did that woman get all that hair spray? He seemed so enamored of her. He was really head over heels in love with this woman. She, on the other hand, seemed somewhat cool and distant, as though she expected it from him.

He turned and staring straight at me he seemed deep in thought. Looking at me and speaking to Yoko, he asked, Doesn't she look like Shirley MacLaine? I think she looks like Shirley MacLaine. She agreed somewhat quietly and I made some forgettable retort.

The two photographers kept clicking off shots and shooting videotape while I fumbled for something to ask. What about his book, his writing, what? He was pleasant and shortly, Derek signaled that the interview had to end because Jacqueline Susann was coming up for a chat with John and Yoko.

A large, muscular man came into the room. A little Asian girl, perhaps four or five, was brought in and the man took her hand. She was going for a walk with a member of the Toronto Maple Leafs hockey team. Couldn't get a more reliable child walker, if you wanted one. The little girl was Yoko's daughter by a previous marriage. Many years later, while in New York, I would see her horsing around on Fifth Avenue with Sean Lennon, her half-brother. That was light years before that fatal night on Central Park West years ago.

The interview was over. John thanked me for coming and I left. The memories remain as does the single proof sheet of black-and-white photos from the shoot. I keep it in a frame on the wall. In one shot, John sits with his hand on the side of his head, staring straight into the lens, leg crossed over his knee showing one shoeless foot. It's an interesting reminder of an extraordinary bit of luck and a bold action on my part that resulted in one of the most memorable meetings I've ever had with a superstar.

I must say that when I met him, he floored me because I was expecting a brash rock & roller and he wasn't anything like that. I found him to be extremely polite, quiet, thoughtful and totally devoted to his wife. I came away with a very different opinion of him and I expect that he must have affected other people the same way. I think that he was quite bright and was really interested in helping the cause of world peace. As I recall, that Christmas or soon thereafter, he took out a huge billboard on Broadway to wish everyone a Happy Christmas (the usual British greeting).

The first lady of rock & roll

The evening news program I watched included a series of brief interviews with prominent women in TV broadcasting. Most of them attempted to play it softly, as Roberta Flack might have sung, when asked about sexism in TV broadcasting. Interesting and somewhat curious that it's broadcasting.

Conspicuous, by her absence and refusal to be interviewed, too, was Barbara Walters, the daughter of a Brooklyn night club owner who made it big on TV. Well, maybe we shouldn't blame Barbara. Where was Leslie, Katie, Deborah, Oprah or Diane? All of them take home hefty paychecks thanks to TV and none of them, despite their millions in contracts, faced the camera to tell it straight. I had the experience of talking to one woman who would, but only to me and she, too, kept the lie alive when interviewed for comment if the topic of salary and women ever came up.

Is there discrimination against women in TV? Do they get the same pay and the same perks as men? And are they forced to sleep with the executive equivalent of a lounge lizard?

I met Alison Steele, the first lady of rock & roll and an inductee in the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, one evening in spring 1995 when we were booked to appear on an ill-fated late-night talk show, Last Call. It was one of the three Brandon Tartikoff failures on which I've guested. I don't think I had any fatal effect on the late-Brandon's