Thank You For Smoking: Gaslighting, Moral Flexibility, & Work/Life Balance

Hello. Today, we're going to talking about two thousand and five movie Thank
You for Smoking. We're going to be talking about the psychology of persuasion and
also mostly focusing on the character of Nick, played by Aaron Eckhart. But
before we jump into all that, I'm going to have our guests introduce himself.
Andy, go ahead, Hello, I'm Andy. I'm Andy. I'm
a professor of psychology, and I study this psychology of persuasion, including the
attitudes that we hold, the opinions that we develop about all sorts of things,
and how they change. So in my day to day work, I
teach out these topics at university, I conduct research on these topics in my
lab, and I also host and produce a podcast called Opinion Science, which
is really built to explore this question in depth every couple weeks by talking to
social scientists like psychologists, political scientists, communication scholars, and professional communicators like
film critics. I've talked to political campaign managers, people who do public opinion
polling to get to the bottom of where are people's opinions coming from and what
are they shaped by? All right, very cool, so perfect for today's
movie. So the plot, the Bare Bones plot of this movie is we
follow Nick Naylor, a spin doctor if you will, for the tobacco industry,
and we sort of follow him as he tries to schmooz his way through
a lot of situations and then eventually loses his role as the big old like
I said, like Sultan of spin and then who is he without his job?
So I think what's interesting about this movie, we'll talk about this first
part is what we see him do throughout the movie, which is convince people
that smoking isn't bad for you. The question right is arguing. He focuses
his entire work as a lobbyist on the argument, and his entire job is
to distract people away from their convictions by appealing to their logic and other emotions
and uses mind games to direct their attention away from their own point to the
point they get confused. And he's really really good at it. He's very
good at it. He makes a point in the movie a few times to
basically say, you don't go to school for what he does. Either like
have it or you don't, and he has it in spades, and he's
very secure in that part of his identity a thousand percent. And if you
argue correctly. You are never wrong, oh, because it's not about being
wrong, it's about can you bamboozle the other person to the point of distraction.
Sometimes that's all you need. So first, if you could you kind
of touch upon it already, Andy, But what exactly is the psychology of
persuasion? As you too? Yeah, So I was excited to revisit this
movie. I was trying to think, like, what is what in the
history of cinema, Like where is this persuasion? Where? What would I
have something to talk about? And I remembered this movie that I saw a
long time ago, and as an anecdotal aside, this was the reason I
turned my DVD player on after probably the three to four years I wasn't we
couldn't remember if we had one. I was talking to my wife, I
was like, we have to watch this on DVD, and she's like,
do we even have a DVD player? Because I bought the DVD in college,
I think whenever it came out, and I was interested in it at
the time because it was lauded, is this great satire and had no idea
that you know, fast forward whatever fifteen years that this would be actually the
work that I'm doing is trying to understand the kinds of things that he's up
to. So persuasion, if we think of it psychologically, we often define
it as communication of a message with the intention to change a person's attitude,
you could say, change people's belief or opinion at the same time. So
it's a form of communication that ultimately is trying to shape the way the other
person sees the world. And so in this case, his job is to
shape people's opinions about tobacco products such that they're not as negative as you know,
Big Medicine is making it out to be. And so through various tactics,
some just logical argument, some through storytelling, some through framing the issue
in a very particular way. So as like Ben said, to distract people
from other considerations, he's aiming ultimately through all of that, to get people
to be more favorable in their personal opinions of tobacco products. So in that
way, that's what he's doing, is persuading. I would say he's using
kind of the classic techniques we sort of think of now when we think of
gas lighting, like you kind of put it, Ben, like swerving the
conversation so that you end up not even arguing about the thing where the topic
started and diverting it tension then also feeding on emotional responses in a way that
makes the argue worth or the person they're debating against feel less grounded in the
point they're making and more driven by their emotional responses, which then the person
who's doing the gaslighting can feed upon. I think a good example of that
is when he's in front of Bill William H. Macy's senator character whose name
I could not tell you. I can see it in my mind's eye,
but I cannot remember how they pronounced it in that movie because it's a wild
name, and he gets the better of him so quickly by appealing to what
he knows, makes that senator emotional, and it was like genuinely disappointing to
see the senator lose the plot so quickly. I'm like, why are you
letting him get your goal? But that is like point of gaslighting in a
lot of ways is to make the other person so discombobulated emotionally that you can
undercut them. I had never quite drawn it to gaslighting before. So one
thing that's worth maybe mentioning is historically they're actually the way that tobacco lobbyists have
done their job for ages. There's this great quote from these old documents that
they pulled up in you know, legislating about this stuff, internal memos from
you know, some big tobacco lobbyer company that said doubt is the product their
whole job. They go, I can't convince you that smoking is healthy.
Will never win if that's our strategy. But what I can do is so
seeds of doubt, right, I can say, well, but how strong
is the research that shows that it's bad for you? Don't these scientists have
a particular vested interest in finding some outcome. In the movie, he calls
out this poor little girl who says, my mom says that smoking is bad
for you, And he says, well, that doesn't sound like a very
credible expert to you, does it? Is your mama scientists or whatever is
your mama doctor or a researcher yep. And so all of that is just
sort of planting seeds of doubt. And there's this beautiful point later on where
he's talking to his son and they're trying to argue about the best flavor of
ice cream, and in the end, the sun is like, well,
but you never convinced me that chocolate is the best. You just convinced me
that the best is not vanilla. And he's like, well, I didn't
have to tell you, like I just needed to prove you wrong, and
as a results, I'm right. And that sort of the idea. These
are folks who are not proving their own position to be true, but the
only real chance they have at success is to suggest that the sort of prevailing
narrative is faulty somehow. And in that argument style where the person playing the
game always has the advantage is that they have no vested interest in anything other
than winning. That's it. So they are able to stay in their window
of tolerance much easier and stay in their prefrontal cortex functioning instead of the exact
opposite that is happening to their prey, who is getting stuck in emotional processing
and operating out of their Olympic system, and they're magulta driven responses which make
them less logical and therefore unable to compete. And that is the entire game
is. If I can get you off base, off kilter, off your
point, it doesn't matter what you prepared. I prepared nothing and I can
beat you. It reminds me of something my dad used to say, who
is a political science professor, but you would tell me that it's important to
remember that the best swordsman in the world does not need to fear the second
best swordsman in the world because he's going to know absolutely everything he's going to
do. We does need to worry about is the worst swordsman in the world.
Oh wold card, mister Wines. We have you ever seen the show
Smart Guy when you all were kids? Disney Channel? Yeah? Little Brother,
Oh oh yeah, yeah, Yeah, there's this. It made such
an impression on me. There's this episode where he's trying to beat a computer
who's been programmed to play chess or something, and so this genius little kid
is working and working and trying to solve the dilemma of like how do I
win against this computer? And then like the idiot neighbor comes by and tries
to play against him and just fries the circuits because he goes, You're the
moves you're making don't make any sense. No reasonable person would do this,
which, as I understand it, that's kind of what you're saying, right,
then, is it like it's so out of left field, it's it's
exactly like that. It's like that, or like playing poker with a drunk
guy. He has a so much better chance him because he a doesn't isn't
able to be connected to his motions, so he doesn't care, and you
have have literally no way of tracking what logic he's using, if any,
at any given moment, if you're sitting there trying to use counting or statistics
or any other kind of reasonable strategy, you are quite possibly going to destroy
him, or he is going to wipe you off the map and take all
your money because he might go all in on nonsense and you never will.
And therein lies exactly why Nick Naylor can defeat this entire When he goes on
the talk show, he defeats an entire panel of people because he comes out
hot and answers the questions he wants to, not the ones he's asked,
knocking them off balance and they don't even know where to do to begin to
recover, and they're left scrambling, which puts you in an emotional state.
Yeah, they're definitely the weaker swordsman in that scenario for sure. Well,
it's not even like, think about the battle in Princess Bride, right,
that is too equally matched competitors going playing games with each other, like,
ha ha, I know something you don't know. I'm not left handed.
But if they were to battle somebody that makes just an incredibly bizarre random move
with no rationale, no thought, no anything but blind dumb luck, an
opportunity, with no perception of the risk that could be countered with strategy,
you can win. In my neck of the woods, there's this thing called
inoculation theory, which is this very cute sea way of talking about how people
resist persuasion by using this metaphor of how vaccines work. So I promise this
is gonna be relevant in a second. So if you think about how vaccines
work, right, we go, We're trying to protect the body against some
attack, right, and normally our bodies are vulnerable to attack because we haven't
had any opportunity to build defenses against it. Right, A novel virus comes
along and you're not prepared for it. But if I take a vaccine,
which is essentially just preparing my body's immune response saying hey, hey body,
this is what that virus might look like if it shows up one day,
take a day or two to sort of build up how you might mount a
defense, and then you've remembered that strategy for the day the virus really comes
along. Okay, So in persuasion, the idea is that, well,
sometimes we are defenseless against attack because we never saw the idea that this belief
could be attacked coming. And so back in the day, this is stuff
from the sixties, they would talk about things called cultural truisms, which are
these things that everybody believes, but nobody really has any reasons for believing things
like an apple a day keeps the doctor away, and so we all sort
of believe it. But then if someone comes along and says, actually,
you know what, apples are not that great for your health, you go,
I guess you're right. I don't I've never heard anyone challenge this viewpoint
before, and I'm defenseless against it. But if you can give people of
suggestion that, like, hey, you know what, someone might come along
and say apples are not healthy, take a few seconds to think about what
you might say to them. Here's a few things that you might say back
to them, and then people are more able to resist persuasion. So in
this case, when you talk about people sort of being ill prepared to defend
their views, in some cases you go, who is this person who's saying
smoking is fine? Like, I'm not used to hearing that. I'm defenseless
against it, and in this moment, I've got nothing to say, right,
But this is a guy. Naylor's a guy who spends his whole life
thinking about what are the objections people are going to have to what I say,
and I'm ready to take those down. And so it's a difference in
preparedness. So a little persuasion trivia that connected, I think to what you're
saying, absolutely and recognizing that the more prepared you are, the more you
walk in with enough confidence to again stay within your window tolerance, which allows
you to stay on mission, stay on point, and resist anybody else's attempts
to knock you off your point, especially once they become irrational and flustered,
because once you get your opening, they're now out of their technique. But
you have honed yours for that exact moment, and you have a huge advantage.
It's why you know, Andy, you basically just described Facebook. Over
the last three years, I was really resisting opportunity to ask you, like,
so, what if an apple is a hoax? Okay, yeah,
but let's let's go ahead and disprove a nople hypothesis. Good luck. But
the for what it's worth, So, indoculation has been used to help people
confront misinformation on social media. And so part of why we're swindled by misinformation
is because we go, well, no one would just tell me something fake,
like, no one would just make a up a user name that simulates
a real person to convince me that something is real. But if you inoculate
against that and say, hey, you know what, imagine you did see
something like this, what might you look for to be on guard for the
possibility is that this isn't good information that is proving this is like in the
last two to three years to be like a really powerful strategy to help people
counter misinformation when they encounter it online. And that has been part of quite
a few continuing education training said I have done on trying to help people learn
how to deal with when you go to the family and dinner and uncle Timmy
has had four beers and been obviously watching things that look like news on YouTube
and reading Q and on and here we go. But if you learn an
inoculation strategy to give yourself some defense to prepare for that argument, it gets
much easier to stay in your window of tolerance, deflect the blows, or
guide the conversation away from that artfully. But when you get stuck in that
point where you're just feeling so incredulously called up, what did you just say?
Did you? Did you really just try to argue that I'm going to
become a conduit for five G through nanotechnology that goes into my veins? Do
you even know what these words mean when they're put together in a concrete sentence,
And they don't, but they feel like they do, so they lock
into their argument and they become a nick nayler who will argue you to death.
It's part of the old thing of never argue with an idiot, because
they will take you down to their level and beat you with experience. But
I think kind of what you were saying, Andy, and like the last
like a few minutes of this movie, we do see him start to become
like an oculation expert, I guess, and that he starts to do what
you're talking about, which is teach Congress people. I think that's who they
were politicians at least to prepare for someone like him, which is like a
great it was a great secondary career path for him to end up being.
It's like when people get arrested and then they end up being the expert in
security or whatever for like the businesses that do that because they are the best
thief. You know. It's a very very similar idea. And I think
what it makes me think of two but I'll just mentioned it briefly because I
don't want to get us caught on a tangent. Is it reminds me so
much too of how like this tactic of how I see a lot lately about
men are men are logical, women are emotional, right of and people get
kind of in arguments of that. And I think this uses like that idea
as well, which is this idea that some people are logically centered and other
people are emotionally centered, and realizing that that's not inherently true, but we
do take advantage of that and try to act like you can be one or
the other. Where what he's doing is a combination. That's what gaslighting is
too, is you're using logic to enact someone's emotion, but then acting like
it isn't I don't know anyone else tetically a gas lighting because I know something
I want to touch upon was like the dehumanizing you see in this movie.
Nope, I'll go for it. Well, I think what this movie does
really artfully because I know it's a satire, so they were really making a
point obviously, is all the little moments throughout this movie where you see the
effect of dehumanization. Where one great example was when they go to LA and
there's that Asian man they do not give us his specific ethnicity, who is
basically just uses I don't know, like a not a toy, but like
an exhibit in the middle of their offices where he's just raking a zen like
a stereotypical like what white people call, like a Japanese a zen garden,
and they don't really mention him. He's just seen off screen. But then
also when they're going through the same LA building, this is inside joke where
like the one guy walking them through is really into the other guy. But
I think they were all just these little tiny ways that we dehumanize others as
think as a way to make these arguments and live in these truth quote unquote
that are sort of awful is in order to take advantage of people, we
have to dehumanize them in order to live with ourselves, to take advantage of
them. And even in how the movie opens, the movie opens with this
character that's just called cancer boy, this boy with cancer, and how even
the way that they talk about him, yes, all the ways that they
talk about him, because even the person is supposed to be like the quote
unquote good guy, the who Hannah, you said, was this is supposed
to be an insert for Bernie Sanders. Yeah, is he's even saying like
that wasn't the right kind of cancer boy. And so everyone in this in
this spin cycle is using other people as pawns. And we have to,
like I said, to humanize others in order to live with ourselves and our
agendas. Like you would even see a big part of why there is continuing
race issues in America, I'll just name that, is because in order to
have enslaved people, we had to dehumanize African American people. And now we
are still dealing with the generations and generational impact of having done that for so
long, and we see it happen all over the world and every atrocity that
has happened, where there's been any degree of racial extermination or ethnic cleansing,
any other horrible way that one human sought to gain power over another human by
creating a common enemy. Right, we create some kind of xenophobia against some
unspecified other that we create a successful target and find some of those andy,
I forgot what word you use to describe beliefs that people believe are what was
the truism? Look at that? Look how simple that is. Looking at
these truisms that people may believe no basis, and then exploiting them by weaponizing
the mothering of human beings. But when people can start locking into these little
things, they can start creating caricatures in their minds that allow them to access
evil parts of their brain that can view that person as biologically speaking, a
competitor for resources and marginalize them in order to take more for yourself. And
it's it's really horrible. How did the Holocaust happen? Let's start with how
much time did Hitler and the Nazi Party spend dehumanizing anyone who is Jewish or
a Gypsy or different different, not you know, white basically, and the
right kind of White, and I think it helps us understand from a psychological
standpoint with this movie of how can someone or how can multiple people defend something
like tobacco, which we all know is inherently harmful and is a simple,
like one of the most simplistically for profit, horrible for humanity things that exists,
products that exist as a lot of them. But even in the within
the tobacco world, they know they're creating a product that makes them a lot
of money but also kills a lot of people. And so in order for
them to deal, they have to dehumanize them, like you can't even like
the sort of worst human being if you will, has to do that in
order to keep going with the with the plot, with their mission. If
the mission is just making money, then I have to detach emotionally from the
fact that I'm harming others for personal capital gain. And so you have to
humanize in order to like not have a full blown, like mental breakdown.
And I think a part of what when we see Joey engage in gaslighting with
his mother, that he's that his dad has showed him how to dehumanize women,
and how that is a part of how that is kind of a part
of what we see happening with Joey and his mother and how that has such
a different impact on the dynamic of the family. But just more, it's
just kind of interesting how when parents model something that this is kind of what
we what can happen right away is that a kid wants to be able to
do that. And I think that just so just shows how easy dehumanizing is
taught, is shown and just him, just him observing his father engage with
other people anyway, That's that's what I was thinking about. Sure I saw
him dehumanize the stepdad a lot. Yeah, absolutely, he I mean,
Nick is we're gonna talking about in a second, He's like, no,
I guess offense. I was gonna say, no offense. Why am I
were about offending him? He is like a royal dude, and he's living
through life isolated, way more isolated than I think he would he would acknowledge
because he is hyper dehumanizing everybody around him. So it would be wild if
his child, after spending a decent amount of time with him, wouldn't take
on some of those traits, because something we do see is him so clearly
wanting his dad's approval the way that you want the approval of any of either
of your parent, but especially a parent who's not as available, you tend
to want their approval way more than the parent who sticks around or is just
more available. And so, of course he wants to take on the traits
of his dad. And you're right, like, what is misogyny if not
dehumanizing women and making them just a collection of annoying traits wearing a trench coat,
you know, and I don't actually like human being. That's the same
as you and so. And it's interesting because that switch for Joey happens so
quickly. In the first thing of the movie where that he's in you can
tell he does not like his dad. He even says like, do not
ruin my childhood when he shows up at the career day, and by the
end of it, he's like fully indoctrinated and to like his dad's way of
thinking. And I think he is at that very tender age though, when
that happens, when you're starting to be more aware socially and you're more wanting
to align with the parent who's not around, I think it's important to mention
with dehumanization that the opposite is true when people are receiving training on anti terrorism
and how to deal with possibly being taken captive. Is it is encouraged to
humanize yourself to counter the processes that are going on in the mind of the
cap tour And in a movie we haven't done yet because reasons you see that
so much happen in Silence with the Lambs, where Buffalo Bill is actively resisting
the girl in the pit trying to humanize herself, and you see him start
to freak out when she starts talking about being a person, and then he
starts referring her to her as it so he can do what he's going to
do. It puts the lotion on its skin, and when she's like,
I'm a person, I'm a woman, right. But we see Nick essentially
train his son that if you create a special pocket in your mind to put
other people in that you've made a game out of it makes it easier to
win and you don't have to care or think about their feelings. And I
didn't see him do that so much to the wife as I did to the
stepdad. He definitely is my suge Inness, Like, I'm not arguing that,
but he went after the stepdad because the stepdad has a position that Nick
once had and was expelled from, so he has resentment towards him, and
he makes little offhand comments at mom, but he goes real specific in at
stepdad. I meant, I meant more that he just picks it up from
his dad. I don't. I didn't mean that he saw the dad dehumanizing
the mom as much as he recognizes that he's always dehumanizing everyone that he's around,
and he just picked that up. So I know what you're Yeah,
so I know, but I know, I understand what you're saying. But
it's more of that a kid will pick that up and try it out and
use that, and a part of that is him just watching him do that
to everybody. And I totally agree that Nick Naylor that he is attacking the
stepdad in any way that he can, mostly because he's a bitch, because
he can't do with the fact that he acted like a complete maniac. I'm
sure in that marriage that is a movie I would never want to watch.
Yeah, all right, Well, is there anything else about the psychology precision
we want to touch upon before we move on to Nick specifically? I was
only going to mention on dehumanization as a as a fairly self serving plug a
year ago. I have a YouTube video on the psychology of dehumanization, which
when someone says I made a YouTube video, you better watch it, you're
right to be suspicious. But this it's good. I think not all those
people have real PhDs. Andy, Yeah, yeah, And so I mean
internet on to that point. I mean, it's really built to be a
video that goes over like the research on this, like empirically, how can
we actually measure when someone is dehumanizing in others? We get into that who
do we tend to humanize? One of the consequences. And I'll only say
as just to add a texture to what we're talking about. The intro the
first like minute or two really was like a horrific and depressing thing to have
to research to put this together, because it's in particular about this terrifying culture
of the kind of late nineteenth century early twentieth century, when there was this
phenomenon of human zoos at giant events, so at the world's fear. In
order to sort of showcase these exotic peoples from the colonies, they literally would
take people from those places and put them on display in precisely the same way
that we put non human animals on display in zoos. And here again it's
it's just sort of feeding a perception of some people as less than perfectly and
fully human as a way to justify the ways in which those folks have been
treated, and so not to bring the mood in that direction, but you
know, it's the kind of thing that you can sort of look at through
a lot of different perspectives. So absolutely so we'll take a break here and
we will be right back, all right. So, Nick, this piece
of ships, well that just makes me think, I just like legitimately heard
you sound exactly like Natasha Lagaro when she was roasting Bieber like a compliment.
I love her. Oh my god, I wish I had her voice.
You know, she's so specific. But when she was like time flies when
you're a piece of shit. Yeah, a quick plug if you guys.
If anyone here has ever watched Another Period, that is an excellent talk about
the dehumanization via reality TV. Another Period is a great mockery of reality TV.
Any who, So, Nick is someone I think one of the first
notes I wrote when I was watching this movie is this guy is always on.
This is somebody who is fully doing this persona this like work version of
himself constantly, like in his personal life and his professional life. He never
seems like he's someone one who has different versions of himself, not in like
a two face Beacha two have been not a two face sort of way.
But you know you mentioning a Batman reference before I did in a movie where
two faces in. It just makes my heart, you know. So you
know what's so funny though, is I did not even think about that tools
literally exiting my mouth that I was about to say two face about a man
who played two face. But did you just watch the words leave and just
go? I was like, I have to grab them before Ben does.
Um. But no, this is someone, This is someone who his identity
is is two dimensional in that there is just this version of him all the
time. Absolutely, oh he is, and yeah he's in He's in a
part all the time. He has formed this part as a defense. We
don't see anything about his past to know why. We just get kind of
little clues from him that something happened to him somewhere that he formed. But
he is on all the time, and it is a full on caricature of
himself. It is a limited function role aka a part of his personality that
he is sectioned off in a walled off and honed to fill things that have
been lost and taken from him. Yeah, this is one of those movies
where we say this a lot, but where we get no backstory, almost
none, in that we are meeting this person, this character right when the
movie starts. We don't know really anything about his childhood. We don't even
know why he got divorced, other than I assume it's because he's in the
back. He's a dirt bag and he's gaslighting and cheating and he deserved it.
Well, one thing I will say is he's clearly someone who's a quote
unquote workaholic. Like he's always working, and he's always also wearing work clothes.
I notice, like even when he is playing top golf and stuff like
that, or like at the batting of the golf range, he's always wearing
some version of his uniform. And I think the most dressed on we ever
see him is he's wearing like a polo shirt with his son when they're getting
dinner. But other than that, he is someone that's well you can tell
right away that he gets his confidence and he says this too by being,
like you said, been this part. And so he's someone that doesn't have
any work life balance. He's always working or he's being the version of him
that works, and it's not great to that point. One of my favorite
little moments is so there's a plot point where he gets kidnapped and these actors
are saying something. They're saying, you know, they're throwing these nicotine patches
on him and making claims about how dangerous smoking is, and even in that
moment where he is in danger, he goes, there's no data that supports
your claim. So he's still on even during the moment when we should be
the most like present and forgetting our work job, literally anything except the parts
of us that can survive, right. And I think that that is a
very important point that reinforces this idea that this man is very stuck in this
manufactured identity he's created for himself. And why he has done that or how
he has done that is a mystery in this film, but we see that
he is constantly seeking reinforcement for being in it and surrounding himself with his little
club of folks comebacks. Yes. Well, that's a great point though,
Ben that even when he's we see his version of downtime, it's with other
people who do the exact same thing that he does, so basically work meetings.
Even when he is with his I guess friends, they're not friends,
I mean friends, but that's the closest we see of friends in his life.
And they are people he doesn't even call friends. They're mostly just colleagues
that he blows off steam with, I would say, or just riffs with.
Well, and I feel like and I feel like a part of the
reason why we see Joey asking him questions is because Joey is trying to get
another version of his dad. He's trying to ask him questions and then he
just decides. It seems like he just decides that the only way he can
get his dad's attention is by asking him about his work, because that's all
there is. Because that's all there is. But that when he's asking him
questions about other things, you can tell that. I mean, Joey is
literally like his whole body is leaning towards his dad when he's talking to him
about this. All of his body language is like I want to hear about
this. I want you to think that I'm interesting. I want you to
think that I know that I know how to ask questions. I want to
think something. I want you to think something differently of me. And one
of the first things I wrote was, Joey is wary as fuck. That's
what I wrote when we saw his sad little face at his desk. Yeah.
I think it's a really great example of if your work is your life,
you know, your kids so desperately want to be a part of your
life, Like when we talked about the this humanizing part, and kids pick
up stuff quick they pick up really quickly, like how to fit in and
how to assimilate and how to get their needs met. And going back to
the work life balance. Even when he has his kid with him, they're
always doing work stuff. He's taking him to LA, He's taking him to
see the Marlboro Man. You know, he's never cancer and he's yes,
he's never just meeting Joey on Joey's terms, like let's go to the park,
Let's go to a basket like a baseball game. Let's even when they're
in LA, he takes him to the boardwalk and they eat hot dogs.
But even still then they're talking about what his dad does. They're talking about
how to have good arguments and how can turn an argument about ice creamage an
argument about liberty and freedom and if you hate freedom, And so it is
a shame because I don't think Nick realizes that he is not that the price
of only being in this part of your life is that you are forcing other
people to be a part of that life too, including your kid, and
you are neglecting their needs. And you are forcing your kid to meet you
on your terms, not you meeting them on their terms, which is selfish.
It is just it's self centered, is more what it is? Yes,
I think what is important to distinguish those The therapist brain in me is
always going, where's the why? Yeah? I don't think how about this?
I don't give a fuck about where the fucking why is what? This
book? An asshole, a therapist of us. And I see Hannah's having
herself a day by myself thinking about this movie character. Go ahead, Ben,
sorry, it's it's okay. Hannah as the representative blundish white male here,
I understand. I will take the blunt of your rage. It is
well earned and deserved. Maybe not by me, but by this asshole who
looks a little bit like me up, you know, more handsome and with
a more square jaw, you know. But anyway, I think the why
part that gets triggered for me when I'm looking at something objectively or you know,
when I'm in my therapist chair is that people that are so stuck in
a role that they don't have a well rounded life usually only do that because
whatever core self they have that they are protecting has felt so vulnerable and hurt
that this part of them evolved to protect that from ever getting hurt again.
Yeah, whatever he developed this four never got resolved, and he is pervasively
stuck in it, to the point that he is so convinced that the only
way to stay safe and to keep my ego intact is to defend others away
from it and maintain a dominant position at all times, at the expense of
my morality and everything else. Yeah, I was going to say, at
the expense of literally everything. Well, because people like him who come off
this way, the irony of it all is that he is wildly insecure.
When you dig down into the middle, this is what you're saying, Ben,
Like this is someone who's in a protective mode all the time. Like
this confidence and leaning into the one thing about himself that he knows is worthwhile
and that he feels really strong about is a way to not be not be
hurt, you know, not be undermined. And that's why, you know,
we don't know what happened with his marriage, but I will say,
as a family therapist and child therapist, the stepparent, unless it's like a
safety situation, you know, probably shouldn't step in the way that Brad stepped
in in the beginning. The stepdad, like, don't come in and try
to like undermine the parenting of the bioparents unless that's necessary. But I will
say Brad and not living in the home that he pays for, as he
makes mention, you know, that is that's very that must be just firing
the insecure parts of him to the moon. And so when he does try
to like pull Brad away and you know, intimidate Brad and all those things
like that is him using his strength, his mouth and his confidence in that
way to make him feel more secure about a situation which he has been kicked
out. Like his family life, his personal life is very it's very insecure,
like he doesn't have loved ones besides his son and maybe his ex.
You know, I'm sure she still feels some warmth towards him as just having
a kid together, but not really. And so I mean it's the cliche
of like people that act like him are higher like covering up a lot of
you know, a lot of lack of confidence. And that's very true.
And you see the facade break a bit when he is sick, you know,
when he does get kidnapped and nicotine patched almost to death, and when
he's in the hospital, you can kind of see an opportunity from more and
Ben, you could probably more on this for maybe like those selves, to
start to shift around. And unfortunately, because he has crafted a life when
every where everyone only sees him in this very specific way, they immediately approach
him like are you back on? Like his son and his co workers,
and even like his sort of friends, those other people the mod squad,
they all only know how to interact with him in this very specific way about
him being this very specific person, and so he falls right back into that
role because there isn't really an opportunity to be more vulnerable, to be different.
Oh, he doesn't want to be vulnerable. But yeah, right,
it's not just that he's looking for an opportunity to get back in here and
said he can't resist it because he feels so profoundly unsafe that the first opportunity
he gets to reassert himself he does so. And you see him do that
in every single chance. And which makes this a beautiful satire is that he
has no character growth, there is no arc, there is no development.
He every chance he gets to have a redemption arc, he misses it on
purpose, like almost, or that he just not. But you see with
Brad like some of the details that stuck out to me, and get the
details, the details, and I'll get Andy to talk about comedy writing at
some point here, maybe against his will. But the is what he probably
hasn't told you is that we were both in the same comedy group, just
at different times. But he felled us off. Mike, Oh did he?
Okay, But there's the grand reveal to that, right to the audience
or to to anybody who's listening to me, seeing me professionally and still tries
to figure me out, which they can't. But sure, my identity is
too complex. But the uh, oh my god, you're such a Gemini
man. Anyway, I don't speak that well. I can tell you for
I can tell you. I know you can't vouch, and I vouch for
her response. I'm used to that. But the uh, the thing that
I think is is really valuable at recognizing is that the character I had,
even alone, represents literally everything that could make him insecure. Bread is taller
than him, Brad has better facial hair than him, Brad is a doctor.
Yes, he's wearing his little coat when we see him held the same
hair color. I mean, part of me wonders if Brad was just him
with a beard stuck on his face. Honestly, that up. Maybe I'm
stilter with camera at work, but he's literally a foil of him. He's
like everything that he's educated, he's smart, he's living in his house,
he's got all of these things. He's neutral. People like him, and
then Nick just can't put it together and get out of his own way.
To be a complete human, he has to be constantly in this self fulfilling
mode of I am right and therefore I win, and the only way I
am valid is if I'm winning, and if I am not winning, I'm
a loser, and the second he gets all this stuff taken away from him,
we watch him crumble, much like we watched another character who is very
similar crumble when he lost his status, and that character is one mister Ronald
Burgundy. I did not know that I was waiting for a Batman or Star
Wars or Friends, but you're right, and if anyone is interested, it's
one of the first episodes we ever did, and we talk a lot about
toxic masculinity and the identity staff that goes along with this, also with David
Kochner, that very fabulous actor, or some both of those. But yeah,
I think I think something you brought up that that triggered an idea in
me is something he says in the movie Nick is like moral flexibility. And
I think an important point you made, Ben is he does not feel safe,
like he is always working in order to keep himself safe, and so
if your priority is just to be safe, you will deprioritize things that other
people wouldn't, and so it makes sense that he might like when watching this
movie, I think a big question as someone watching would be how can this
guy live with himself? And there is possibly a part of him. That's
like, in order to stay safe, I have to neglect morals and be
flexible in that morality. And as we've talked about many times before, our
safety is king. If we will, we will devalue a lot in order
to be safe, or in order to feel safe, we will devalue anything
we need to, because once our parts take hold, parts evolve in order
to limit the functions of unnecessary parts of our personality in reference to survival or
surviving the moment. Right, So, the part of you that kisses your
children is not the same part of you that could put someone's head through a
wall if they broke into your house who wasn't supposed to be there. That
animalistic part of you is not the same part of you that plays daddy,
but it lives inside of you. And yesterday I realized that I have a
part that doesn't care about anybody or anything, and that is the I have
to pee part, the oldest bulldoze through people, kids down. It will
be straight up, Master Skywalker, what do we do well? You don't
let me think of that episode in Seinfeld when there's the fire and George Costanza
flows through that birthday party of kids to get out of the part he pushes
aside the grandmother you see her fall on the floor, and then the call
back in the office where they do exactly the same thing and Michael Scott loses
it. But yeah, it's like those parts of us that when we feel
safe, we would morally adhere to do, can have the ability to off
the window, and we don't feel safe. And in this context, safety
is like we said, the emotional safety, and he is like, yeah,
he definitely little things he says here and there, the fact that it
keeps bringing up that you don't have to go to school for what he does.
It's inherent that speaks to someone who might be a little insecure or a
lot insecure about their like innate intellectual intelligence, their school background, their academics.
And I'm sure if he's hanging off a bunch of high falutin white guys,
I'm sure there's a lot of guys who went to IVS and won't shut
the fuck up about it, oh guarantee. And we're in those little secret
societies that I want to get my eyeballs on. I was thinking one thing,
or regarding the moral flexibility question, that I think there's an important moment
in the movie, which is him acknowledging that smoking is harmful, right,
Like he talks about death toll by smoking, and at some point even acknowledges,
yet acknowledge is the dangers of tobacco to his close friends or non friends
or whatever the case may be, in his group. And because you can
imagine that, like all of this is a very you call it motivated reasoning,
where he goes, well, I have to get the job done,
and the best way to do that is to convince myself that I am actually
right. So there's a version of the story where you go, this guy
has just convinced himself that he's in the rights, and therefore he feels licensed
to say this stuff all the time. But it's clear that he's saying things
he doesn't believe, because he's acknowledged that's woking is harmful, and yet is
choosing to engage in debate and conversation to make a point that he knows is
not necessarily valid. And so that that's where some of that moral quantry comes
in, where that is something that he is comfortable doing, but not something
that others would be quite so comfortable doing. Right, I stick to it
right. If I have a value, if I have a belief, I'm
not going to betray that. I'm going to stick to it. And so
he just is on the far end of the continuum, aware that duality is
a okay yeah. And what's so interesting too, is in moments in the
movie, I think specifically in one of the beginning scenes where his son's doing
homework at his apartment and they're like, I have to write in a same
way, America is the best country in the world, so stupid, and
now watching this with like twenty twenty two eyes, it's like, are you
kidding me? I don't know if folks teacher would ever put that essay question
again, But you see that he does have almost like a nihilism that speaks
to someone who is a little depressed and kind of knows what they're doing sucks
and is really kind of how do I want to put it? He is
like almost like put off by the world. You know, he sees the
world very like well, nihilistically, and it makes me wonder how much this
job does take a toll on him emotionally in a way that he also can't
fully acknowledge because that would be too much oh, can the trauma therapist talk
now? Because as resident trauma therapist. So someone's got a bingo card,
right, because I just said trauma. The answer I will tell you is
that, without question, whatever part of him he is dissociating from that is
feeling all of this will come back and come out later, and it will
be a hefty load to deal with. When that happens is anyone's guess.
But when he has that reckoning, he will buckle and fall to the ground
like Ebenezer Scrooge with the third Spirit. Very timely, the system of his
parts will fail and the vulnerable self will shine through, and then the other
parts that he has been putting, all of the shit he has been spewing,
that he knows his shit, it's going to come out. It's like
you can't eat shit without knowing it. Shit. You can put sprinkles on
it, but at some point your internal systems are going to tell you,
hey, buddy, we have sepsist. Tell me we got a problem here.
Well, I think too, like when he has to go visit like
the same Elliott character that whole time, like the actor does a good job
of keeping you as the like as the audience member kind of on your toes
a little bit about where his head's even at. He seems a lot more
conflicted, and that seems like a point of the movie kind of what you
mentioned before about like the possibility for redemption, where you see the potential of
the facade slipping and you see these little glimpses in his eyes where he's like,
Oh, I am a piece of shit, aren't it? Like I
know that I am. I know that I am in this very like a
sort of way, but I might actually like be one though, like like
in my heart though, and so or at least like having a real sense
of what I'm doing is really bad, Like his conscious is almost breaking through.
But I think what makes this movie a satire instead of a classic like
redemption art kind of story is that he like snapped right back like a like
a rubber band. By the end of the movie, he's eating his own
bullshit again. And but that's I think more realistic. Actually. I think
someone like him would need several situations in which they have a mild internal reckoning
before they actually decide to change something we talk about in therapy, and I've
talked about this podcast about how in order to change in therapy, you need
to be at a point of like ultimate discomfort, like I can't keep living
like this. It's too uncomfortable that I am willing to change and do the
work of changing because I can't deal with how things are now. And he's
not there yet. In the movie, you seem kind of get he's starting
to go on that road. So I think that there's a potential for like
if we saw like the twenty years for this guy, I think we might
get there eventually because I think also too, he's still fairly young, he's
still good looking, you know, he's still kN schmooz and you know,
probably get laid and all that stuff, and but there also is like an
obvious emptiness in him, and I feel like eventually, I hope, I
guess maybe this is optimist in me, think that there's going to be a
point when he's like, my life sucks. And we do kind of see
that when he loses his job though, So I guess like if he had
maintained that, like lost his job and never found a way out of that
back into that persona doing his job again, he might be someone that would
finally go to therapy and get his shit together. Then this is definitely like
a spoilers welcome podcast a thousand percent people, we're talking about everything. It
didn't occur to me, having listened to a handful of him, It didn't
occur to me until just now. I was like, oh wait a minute,
No, Like I just watched the movie. That's that's something that happens
towards the end we're going to we're telling people about it just right. And
the movie did come out seventeen years ago, so you know, if you
haven't seen it by now, it's you know, um that stuff, your
right? Yeah, And so I don't know because and I think sliding into
one of the tops we wanted to discuss is the idea of detachment um in
that probably one of the clearest mental healthy things we see happen in this movie
is the depression he falls into when he loses his job, in his position,
and that does happen when, like we talked about Ben, when the
only part of him that is activated, the only part of him that is
worthwhile, is taken from you, you are fucked, correct, Once you
lose your identity, once you lose whatever you've invested in. If that gets
taken from you, you have to reinvent yourself or figure out how to reapply
the known skills in a different context. And that takes grieving, and people
don't want to do that because grieving hurts. Yeah, and he actively resists
any opportunity to take any responsibility for his own feelings. Ever, Yeah,
he just looks out and that he falls back into the role because in more
in real life situations. And why I discourage people from getting totally involved in
one area of their life is that, like I said, you're fucked if
you lose that. And so you want to practice something called like I call
healthy detachment, which is you never want one thing in your life to be
the thing that gives you meaning and the thing that makes you who you are,
because you don't have control over that thing maintaining in your life forever.
You mean, like when you're so hell bent on being the lawyer that catches
the mob bosses here we go, that you lose sight of the morality.
Yeah, and you allow everything to be driven by chance and might literally become
a batman villain and you let a quarter dictate your life. No, And
so people will really buck against me as a therapist when I discourage attachment in
that way, and because you're right, like in a sense, like people
do want the relationship to be everything or their kid or being a parent,
or their job. And I think on its face it doesn't seem that bad.
But like you've seen in this if nothing else today away from this movie
is that that's the that's what happens though. You need your identity to be
multifaceted so that if something happens that's out of your control, you can still
keep going on and you don't have to fall apart and just stare in your
refrigerator like he does. Well. Often people who do jobs like his,
any job that requires you to get into a flow state regularly. And this
will be something I learned at Eastern Illinois, or both me and Andy achieved
our basic psychological education, so high five there. What I learned in at
Eastern that I always took with me is people who are engaged in high flow
jobs often don't retire until they're ready to die, like ready to love and
they die, yeah, or until they're made to retire. And you see
police officers and surgeons and pilots and politicians, is why they don't retire until
they literally cannot do the job anymore because they often have given so much to
this job and get so addicted to being in that flow state where they feel
like gods flow. It's that state where you are able to spontaneously access all
of your resources in a dynamic way that allows you to solve problems with every
bit of learning you've ever had without the danger state that usually produces it.
And that's important because when you're in the same kind of flow state that survival
activates, it's fucking scary and you don't want to do it again. But
when you get to do it, when you're on stage or performing a surgery
and you just find it and you are in the zone, it feels really
good and it's addictive. And people that are in jobs like this often lose
track of other parts of their life where they find meaning. And I work
with police. This is something that I see a lot, and we have
to do preretirement seminars with like it's important that you start investing in non police
friends and non police activities because everything around you, much like Nick Naylor is
investing everything is lobbyist friends. Your identity becomes so unfascinated that when that meaning
you derived from that is taken from you. You lose the will to live
for real, And it's essentially encountering logo therapy and reverse. It is learning
that without purpose, people die and finding purpose is the meaning of life.
That suffering is unavoidable, but purpose allows you to get through with a why,
you can endure anyhow. But he loses his why, and we see
glimpses of it when why is taken from him. When I cannot remember her
name, but she will be Katie Holmes, because I don't know that Katie
Holmes is capable of being other than Katie Holmes, but recognizing that when Katie
Holmes takes from him and beats him at his own game, Yeah, and
she legitimately whipped his ass like he thought he was able to be vulnerable with
her, at least enough so he thought that their conversations were okay, he
can actually process some of this stuff, unload that she's on his team and
he's being drifted. And it wasn't until he was able to find leverage over
her that we see him break out of this fired no job, no friends,
not talking to anybody, not going anywhere, not leaving the house,
moping state, where he has no meaning that he very may have well gotten
suicidal from had that persisted. And it's very important that people recognize life must
be multifaceted, meaning must come from many directions because the only constant in life
has changed. I wonder if it's worth reframing a little bit of this one
thing. I'm thinking as you're talking about this, I don't know the clinical
literature, so maybe I'm off face here, But to frame that as detachment
doesn't strike me as quite capturing it, right, Because for as much as
our attachment to identities, roles and what have you and set us up for
negative outcomes, yeah, they're also a vehicle for us to feel good.
Right when we are attached right, we can celebrate our victories as though they
are our own. We can feel good when we accomplish things in that domain.
It seems like the critical thing is not leaning only on one identity.
In there's some work and self esteem showing that people can have variance in the
number of contingencies of self worth that they have, And so sometimes you go,
well, I get my self esteem from a whole bunch of places.
I get it from my family, I get it from my job, I
get it from my after school activities. I get it from whatever. I've
got a lot of contingencies of self worth. Others say I only feel good
when I win the basketball game. I play basketball with my friends. The
only time I feel good is when I win. There. Okay, well,
that's as you're saying, dangerous because that sets you up for Hey,
if you lose your basketball game, your self esteem plummets. You feel miserable.
But if you had other contingencies of self worth, you get a buffer.
You go, I can lose and I can feel the hits right.
I'm attached to that. That's part of the thing that gets me going.
But I have this array of other bases of self worth that I can turn
to, other identities, other roles, other virtues, And so I don't
know that I would quite. It doesn't seem like we're quite saying to detach
from these domains, but just to diversify your portfolio of where you get the
juice right and which you know. Ben's add took over here and will own
that the medicine does not work at this point in time at night. But
Anywaho, the no detachment comes in when you want to numb out and you
don't want to feel any of that anymore, and then the detachment will set
in. And that's I think where people are enabled to do things they would
normally, where they start trading now feelings that give them what they feel like
they can have or can't do, deserve that they can let themselves have versus
what they really want. What goes it's consistent with their value, So they
detach from their belief that they can pursue what they want and they accept what
they feel they can have. It feels accessible to meet whatever need they can
and have. Is why people who may really have a problem with alcohol or
have a problem with casual sex, if they have been single long enough,
may start trading where their moral stance on it is and go, well,
I actually kind of have a need and I've been single for a long time
and nobody's liked me, and this person doesn't want to date, but I
mean they'll be with me for tonight. That's better than nobody with me at
all. Well, and I can further clarify that clinically when I talk about
detachment with clients, and I think I use this word but maybe I missed
it. Is I say healthy detachment. I don't just say detachment period,
I say healthy detachment. And I define that for clients as the sort of
like antecdote or like counterpoint to enmeshment, because what he really is is he
is enmeshed with work. And so diagram is one circle, yes, and
so another term for it actually is non attachment too. But I just used
attachment. And but yeah, you're right, like there's a difference between detached
when I think how it's more used in mainstream language and then how I use
it specifically as a clinician, which could be wrong. I don't know,
but I like to make up my own concepts. But healthy detachment is what
I'm talking about, which is where we can have separation from something without it
fucking up our regulation, our emotional regulation. But is anything else I want
to talk about about Nick? Before we shifted the treatment. Now I think
we've nailed mister Naylor, just like we got the view of the relationship we
should have gotten in the dark Night with two actors that actually had chemistry with
each other. See there, it is all right. So we will take
another break here to treatment. Who would like to go first? Dunt?
Dunt talking about treatment? Oh, but maybe all volunteer because I'm going to
have the most oddball approach to the question. Sure, that's someone who in
my world we use treatment in quite a different way like we treat the treatment
is the experiment that we're doing. But that's not quite what I'm going to
say here, which is some of this got me thinking of I know,
there's some work in the concept of authenticity, this idea of essentially what this
guy, Nick Nayler's not being right, which is he's preventing he's presenting a
very manicured and deliberate image of himself to the world to the point that is
dishonest because he's saying things outwardly that we know he doesn't believe. And you
know, within the domain of experimental and social psychology, there's a huge focus
on positive psychology as it pertains to life satisfaction and well being, and there
are data showing that authenticity is related to this. And so it sort of
strikes me that some of the ills that this guy is facing that we've talked
about could be stemming from the fact that he's not representing his authentic self to
the world around him. The day to show that, for example, in
relationships. When we feel like we're being guarded, when we're not revealing our
true self to our partner, then relationship satisfaction isn't as high as it could
be. And so I can't quite confidently take this kind of predictive correlational work
and give a prescriptive like everyone ought to do this or this guy ought to
do this. But I would encourage this fella to practice a little more authenticity,
to reflect a little bit on who he actually is and let other people
into that rather than being so guarded and deliberate in the way that he presents
himself. Did I approach this treatment plation of the program honestly? Someone like
him, though, I think where your kind of work would be really helpful,
as I do think someone like him might need like actual evidence, like
study based evidence to back up why us as clinicians would be encouraging him to
do something that's going to make him want to barf on himself. I mean,
first you'd have to figure out who often technique even is. But then
yeah, Brittany M I love you, but I'm going to profoundly disagree with
you here. We just watched an entire movie about a man who rejects evidence,
and you said that he might need evidence too. Well, here's what
I'm saying is he definitely try to spin it, and that'll be something as
a therapist will have to address with him. Is like, is having a
system for stopping his spin in your office? But I do think someone who
is that guarded and that stuck sometimes and also no offense, a man like
that needs like logic quote unquote, like evidence to prove why they should make
a change like that, and not just like it might be better for your
overall well being and mental health, not this man. Yeah, and alternatively,
like if you look at what is the thing that really gets him going,
it seems like he does want to have a good relationship with his kids,
right, Yeah, it seems like there is part of that that is
a value of his. And you could pitch it, right if I put
my you know, how do you frame the message hat on? You could
pitch this as sort of most in the interest of improving the relationship you have
with your son, right, The way you foster a stronger relationship is to
be true to yourself. I mean, you know, you can't tell your
kid everything, but you could get a little closer maybe than this guy has
gotten, or maybe in his case, a little bit less, a little
further. Well, and maybe that expose is move in that direction, right,
can't hide from it anymore? Right, there are secrets that were revealed,
and maybe embracing that as a strategy for finally feeling a little more comfortable
with yourself. That's very true. Well, Ben, would you like to
go next? Sen since you know everything? I'm glad you finally openly acknowledge
that. Can you tell my wife please? Because she's been with me for
thirteen years and she hasn't learned yet. So I think maybe if we could
get some validation on that point. No, never, never, I'll use
the mighty edit hammer and we'll just delete the part where it sounds really sarcastic
that you can have a little you can have to make a little you can
make a little button out of it that you just, you know, wear
on your neck roundhouse and you hit me saying that whenever your wife challenges you,
I'm gonna put it in a build a bear and that way can press
the heart of it. Knows everything, see validation. But any who not
that they knew everything? I think I know working with this guy recognizing that
if you get into the game with him, you will activate that part no
matter what you are doing. And you have to get him to a spot
where and he has to get himself with me be super clear about that.
He has to be willing to let that armor down and put down his sword
and be authentic like Andy is saying, like, you have to find somebody
some way to access where the real himn is. And the only times I
think we see that in this film we see a little glimpse of it is
when he sees his because that breaks his demeanor every time, and he has
to switch in and out of it, and you see that look of like,
oh shit, what do I do with this? And Aaron Eckart's face
was really good at that. His facial acting was really good at showing an
affect change, which for non jargon languages, emotions are the biography and affect
is the biology of our feelings. So it's the facial expressions, the body
language, the tone of voice, those kinds of things as outward expressions that
communicate to other humans what the feeling is in a way that can be perceived
or subconsciously. Is the word I'm looking for there any who recognizing that for
him, getting to that authentic part of him, that vulnerable side of him,
is going to have to mean you take more of that kind of Fritz
Pearl's approach or even the Carl Rogers approach, which neither of which I really
love doing with clients, where when someone starts talking, you just don't give
them anything other than and you sit with them and make them feel by not
trying to do anything with their feeling but create space for it. And I
think for him that would drive him bananas for a while, because people who
have that like high drive, high anxiety, high enjoyment out of conflict when
you aren't giving it to them, We'll try to elicit that kind of response
from you. And I think for him, breaking out of the part that
wants to play the game with you and wants to beat you and wants to
win is going to be vital for any therapist to figure out if you're going
to get anywhere. He has to figure that out in his end, but
a therapist also has to recognize when they're going to do something to inevitably trigger
that part and avoid that technique at all times. It is why Brittany I
say I love you, but I disagree. Is that the minute you start
taking out research, he's going to active the lobbyist part of him and he's
going to challenge every fucking thing. And it's going to be like arguing with
qann morons on the internet, where no matter what degree of evidence, they're
just going to ask for more. And then they last, well, who
wrote it, well, who funded it? Well? Peer reviewed? But
they don't know what peer reviewed means. They haven't taken a research methods course
and wouldn't know the difference between a peer reviewed article and something Some jackass on
the internet wrote, oh wait, do we describe qn all? We already
said, okay, we're good. Anyway, recognizing the importance of keeping him
out of that part and keeping him in his authentic self is going to require
doing the opposite of what he wants you to do and showing him that he
cannot, in any way, shape or form draw you in to his game.
You have to gray rock with him. Essentially. Yeah, where the
therapist pulls a very calm, quiet, non engaging, non competitive is that
the way you want to see it? Interesting? Like that kind of thing.
I recognize that. And then when his body starts to react. You'd
have to feel this out, but recognizing the more gestalt therapy like approach of
looking at him and going, what's going on with your body right now?
I wonder why you're doing that? What's that? What are you feeling?
And watch him I think of him. I don't know if I've talked about
this on the show before, but I talk about it with people I supervised
because it had to profound impact on me of watching the Gloria videos, which
I believe are on YouTube where yea three therapists, three classic white men therapists,
but any who go through some of the foundational approaches to what we're used
over the last forty years of RIBT versus. We see RIBT versus person centered
versus Gestalt therapy in a showdown with the same client, and you see this
person that's doing therapy with Gloria has a lot of parts of her that are
a lot like Nick Nayler that want to fight, want to argue, want
to contend and stay very defensive, very on guard, and keep the therapist
off balance. And Pearls, Fritz Pearls, the creator of Gestalt therapy,
draws her attention back to her body and doesn't engage with her stuff, and
you see that start to really throw her off her game really fast. And
then watching the ribt logical approach try to go after her, and she you
know, as good and funny as Ellis's and be able to break her out
of stuff. He doesn't get nearly as much work out of her as Carl
Rogers does by not engaging with her ongoing narrative that she's spinning to keep her
walls up. No matter what the other therapist order, she keeps spinning another
thing to put up another defense, another wall, just like Nick Naylor does.
And watching Rogers sit and stare at her and go and her get profoundly
uncomfortable and start yelling at him and trying to draw him in and like,
why aren't you saying you think? Why are you doing? Aren't you supposed
to be helping, supposed to be about me? And he just goes,
I see that upsets you, and then unbeknownst to her, because it does
upset me, it makes me, And then he's she's forced to fill the
space with her own, real, authentic feelings and she doesn't even realize she's
doing it. But all he had to do to create that was not engage.
And I think it's really important to recognize with a character like Nick,
if you try to contend with him, if you try to be the expert,
you can never prove his null hypothesis. You cannot win. And if
you try to, he's already won. And he tells you that. So
for me, it would be more of that with drawn quiet. I'm gonna
help you and meet you where you're at, and when you're ready to engage,
we can do the work and do the teaching and do the things I
might do with clients you need it. But not him. He would eat
that alive and just go home and research it and tear you apart on it
and make you frustrated it by going, well, you know who says that,
doctor Latreuelle. He says that if you try to convince people, I'm
just be rejecting. And he went to Ohio state. Where did you go
to? Don't bring me into this right state? Wrong college? All right?
Weel, Hannah, would you like to go? Yeah? Sure?
So I really thought about the family a lot in this film, and I
have a couple of different ideas, but I think the main thing to know
is before I could ever have Nick Naylor in session in any capacity, he
would have to do individual work first. So that's that's just like a caveat
to what I'm about to talk about. So I've been thinking about blended families
and how do we if Nick Naylor comes around to it at some point,
how do we help foster a better situation for Joey For a couple of different
reasons. One, Joey has gotten the validation from his father already Eddie that
the way that he's acting is good in some way, or that he is
seen. And the behavior that I'm talking about is the gas lighting that he
does with his mother. I think he's the reason why his dad comes around
to deciding to turn on the reporter. He becomes the little genius of his
own in terms of the awful behavior that his father has and so and that
at some point when Nick Naylor has to diversify his portfolio, they will have
to contend with his son have learned this bad behavior from him in the past,
and how are they going to manage that? And also how are they
going to manage that without the mother being activated by probably behavior that was present
in their marriage as well. And so a part of what I was thinking
about, I don't know that we would include Brad or not. Brad's kind
of I feel like Brad might be because also he's not a permanent person yet,
Like he's not she's not married to him. Yeah, so you wouldn't
necessarily bring Brad into the picture, but it just makes me think about how
important it would be. So let's say I get this. I have the
family, I have the mom and the dad, and I have Joey,
and I have all of them in my office, and we're dealing with his
behavior towards a teacher who pulled something kind of what Ben was talking about,
how he would how he would work with Nick of not like, Joey's not
getting the response that he needs or that he wants in order to move forward
with something. And so let's say he gets really mad and starts cursing out
the teacher. Let's just say that's what happens. And so they come into
my office because this is like the sixth or seventh time this has happened.
This has happened enough times. So they come into my office, and a
part of what I would really want to help them do is a help Nick
take responsibility for his behavior in the first place. And a part of the
way that I would do that is we would just talk about different ways,
just talk about kind of asking Joey a little bit like what do you feel
like you did to contribute to this? And he might say nothing. He
might because he's a kid, and also that's pretty natural and normal, or
he would say I don't know. Then I would have I would be able
to kind of pull Mom and Dad in and say, well, do one
of you want to give us a better sense of what we think is contributing
to this, And a part of the work I would have to do is
really watch mom and dad to see whether or not that they would be activated.
Mom might be activated based on talking about this. She might want to
blame Dad for the behavior that he's shown in the past, which would make
a lot of sense, like those are all natural experiences that a parent would
have when you're trying to comparent with someone. And so a part of what
I would then try to help do is help them give examples and also just
take responsibility for some of the behavior that they've both engaged with in order to
help show Joey that it's okay to apologize. It's okay to take responsibility for
behavior that you have engaged in. And then what we're also doing is help
them look at each other more as a family instead of the mom and the
dad verses each other. If the mom and the dad are verses each other,
co parenting becomes much more complicated and has a more of a tendency to
put the kid in the middle. And so that's definitely that's definitely something that
we'd want to avoid in this setting, especially because that's a part of what
Nick Naylor's deal is is that he you know, he always wins. And
so that's kind of what I was thinking about and what I would want to
do with them as a family, because this family would be would have continued
to have problems in struggles, and they would come out from Joey because Joey
is just trying to get his needs met because he's a kid, And that
that would be a part of what I would want to do in order to
help this family unit continue to have dynamics that are manageable and healthy and livable
and sustainable. It's great, Hannah, you stole my answer Hannah's answers,
So I would think the only thing I would add is, yeah, I
was gonna speak on what you speak now, which is like the behavior's picking
up from his dad's definitely gonna get him in trouble at school, and or
we see already that he's undercutting his mother's parenting. And what I would have
to you have to build up the parents to realize that they have to keep
limits setting even if your kid kind of gets the best of you argumentatively,
you're still allowed to hold and set limits. And like the way that mom
gets played by him in that one scene where he like reads mom down and
then she lets him get what he wants, Like just you know, educating
parents, and that's rewarding the behavior that you're wanting to minimize or discourage.
And then also I think just a general psycho education I would give parents about
what i'd call kid business versus adult business, and that unfortunately, this kid
has been involved in a lot of adult business, which can happen when you're
when you're an only child and when you have parents who are just kind of
taking you around with them, you can accidentally or incidentally get a lot of
adult business. And so would have to really re establish those boundaries and if
I was working with Joey specifically, it's like a child therapist around this,
I think something you have to acknowledge, but you kind of stuff with the
apologizing part from the parents. And this is what I would do with kids
too, is yeah, you're right, it's not fair, Like when you're
a kid, like there are some things you're not supposed to know, and
if your parents are going to be good parents to you, part of their
job is to only is to not give you any adult business. You don't
need to know, Like your job is to be safe, feel safe and
be happy and to play and figure out who you are and go to school.
And knowing too much adult business it can feel cool or good at the
time because it can feel like you're part of the adult club, but it's
getting in the way of you being able to be a kid in the way
that you need to be a kid to feel good. And when I work
with kids who have gone through life in such a way that they just get
exposed to a lot of adult business, this is a really hard part I
have to practice. I have to like encourage a lot of radical acceptance about
being a kid. Sometimes I'll even just acknowledge for kids. Being a kid
can suck because you are a miner. I usually say, when you're till
you're not a minor anymore, until you're totally independent. The adults in your
life, the parents in your life, are allowed to tell you what to
do. They're allowed to control what you know to a certain extent, and
that does feel shitty. Sometimes I wouldn't say shitty, but maybe I would
this kid. It might get him to buy in with me. Yeah,
I might have. Yeah, But sometimes with those kids, you just have
to acknowledge, like, yeah, you're right, Like you've known a lot
of stuff that other kids probably wouldn't know or shouldn't know, and it's gonna
this adjustment's gonna feel bad, it's gonna suck, and it's happening against your
will. So part of what I think you have to do sometimes to get
kids to buy in is just fully acknowledge the things that they're pissed about and
validate it and not try to argue against it, like this is what's so
great about being a kid. You'd be like, yeah, a lot of
parts of being kids sucks, and there's a lot of part those are great.
There's a lot of parts of being an adult that sucks. No matter
what role you're in, parts are gonna suck and parts are gonna rock.
And like that's the long and the short of it. And he would be
a kid that I think you'd have to take. I feel like i'd probably
take a more yeah, a more like irreverent approach with because I think he'd
respect that more because you're trying to because there is a way that as a
child therapist you can both be boundary boundary and appropriately boundary with a kid while
also not talking down to them. He'd be a kid that if I talk
down to him, he would tell me to go fuck myself, and he'd
be right to do it, he would. Yeah, so might Therapists don't
have to be a parent, and we don't have to play the role of
parent. That's not our job. Our job isn't to maintain appropriate boundaries.
It's to be accessible and to facilitate, right. It's my parents sometimes can
get upside of like what you can swear with my kid. It's my job
to get to the emotional content and emotional root of the issue. Yeah,
and to also take that happening for the kid in a way that's safe for
them. Yeah, because we're not policing kids either. Like, if he's
in my office and he's swearing, I'm not going to be like, you
can't say the A word, like unless he's saying it to me, and
then I would say, you got to respect me. You can swear,
but but I'm not you can't swear at me. So that's the approach I
take with him is I'd probably treat him sort of like a little adult in
the way that I would talk to him, but as a therapist, as
a child therapist, I would always be mindful of boundaries so that I'm not
feeding into the dynamic that I'm trying to instill in his parents. Yeah.
Still, that's that. So we will take a final break here and then
come back for final thoughts. All right, so I can go first.
As like I said, this is my first time seeing this movie. I
liked it. I didn't realize it was the same director as Juno and the
New Ghostbusters movie, but yeah, I really liked it. It was zingier
than I thought it would be. I think I was in college when I
first came out, and I think because of the subject matter, I assumed
it was some boring political like adult movie in a way that, even though
I was nineteen, sounded very boring. So it was a lot quippier and
entertaining than I thought it would be. So I don't know if I've necessarily
watched it again because everyone is so awful that it didn't feel enjoyable in that
sense, but it was. It was a fun way to engage with more
serious subject matter. So that's kind of my final thoughts on this movie.
Al Right, okay, alread Anna, I'll go next, really really quickly.
I don't think that I would watch this movie again. I I hate
the main character. I'm sad for the on and he doesn't learn a lesson.
He doesn't learn any kind of lesson, and I really need him to
learn a lesson, and so I don't think that I would watch again.
Very well acted, it was fun to watch, like I did like in
some ways it was fun to watch, but mostly I hate the character,
and therefore I shan't. I shan't be watching this film again. That's all
I have. Oh right, Andy, you want to go sure? Yeah.
So I also enjoyed it, but I had seen it a long time
ago, and it was fun to watch again. I got my whatever I
paid a blockbuster fifteen years ago for it, so I got my five dollars
worth many years delayed. Yeah, I enjoyed it, and it's sort of
it is its own thing, right, If you're expecting redemption or growth,
you're not going to find it. But but that's not the point. Apparently
it was actually like a bestselling novel in the nineties, and it took him
forever to finally get all the pieces together and line up all the people that
needed to make it into a movie. But one thing that I think is
interesting about it is how prescient it was in that at the time, maybe
it was sort of novel to think about tobacco lobbies and sowing seeds of doubt
and presenting a debate that isn't actually a debate. It's settled science. Cigarettes
are bad. But you could plug kind of the same narrative into people who
champion climate change skepticism, again, sowing seeds of doubt, not necessarily making
a positive claim, but just casting doubt on claims that the Earth is warming.
And as I think about it, you know, over the last couple
of years of sowing doubt about the pandemic, about the value of health protective
behaviors. We sort of are now, maybe more cynical and attentive to the
fact that folks like Nick Naylor are a little more omnipresent than we may have
given credit when this came out in two thousand and five. So for that
reason, I think it's worth a watch today, even though it was made
quite a while ago. Yeah, yeah, I agree. I think the
last time I watched this movie, I was sitting in my dorm room in
Thomas Hall at Eastern Illinois when it was on the movie Channel, which was
among my favorite things, the campus movie channel. See right, you just
you are up at two am, board or studying or whatever else you may
be doing in college, and then man, there is a great movie that
is going to come on. Because whoever picked those, they would pick weird
movies, but they were all good, and this is one of them that
just like ran on a loop for a while, like they'd run a couple
of different movies all day for like a week or whatever. But this one
came on and I really enjoyed this. Then I enjoy it more now.
Although the prophecy told by movies made around this time that were supposed to be
satirical and not prophetic. Between this and the joyous film that Idiocracy, the
glorious gem that that was, is these have become almost predictive of the realities
that we live in. They were supposed to be warnings. We're not supposed
to be targets, and yet here we are sowing doubt. Having someone actively
tell everyone I am literally just going to say bullshit and that person be elected
president of the United States is not something I think any of us thought was
real, and yet here we are and that happened, and we went through
this time we're like, hey, there's a disease that's killing millions of people,
and people are like, nah, it's not real. What what?
And the number of us that got drawn into arguments with keyboard trolls that were
Nick Naylor's in training, maybe less smart and probably less handsome and a little
more neckity, but it became real. And watching this movie, now that
we're more on the other side of that than we were a couple of years
ago, I find the humor in it again and can see like the Okay,
maybe just maybe watching movies like this can help me inoculate myself a little
bit more against these people. And rather than take the approach we've all had
to take. I think just just the way that this film speaks to you
as an opportunity to consider the mentality of the person you're arguing against before getting
drawn into the argument and realize that you couldn't win anyway. There is literally
no way to win. So don't feed the troll. And it is probably
the best message you can give for your mental health that if you're sitting around
at the Thanksgiving table and all of a sudden, Grandpa Frank says, wow
about them democrats, you go like, oh, look at that my dog
shit on the floor, and you just leave. Well, what you don't
do? You don't feed the troll. You solve its three riddles and then
you cross the bridge and then you're good. But if right, but you
have to first ask it what the flying velocity of a swallow is? What?
I hear you? I got your bed all right? I'm ashamed.
I am ashamed, Brittany shame anyway, Anyway, I like this film.
I would watch it again, and I it may have been something I watched
in Psychopathology of Film that we we talked about at Eastern, which is my
favorite class ever. So I think this movie is great. All right,
Well, um, Andy, before we sign off, where would you like
to be found? Place of my choosing is so you can find out more
about me and the research that I do at Andy Latrelle dot com latrell with
twots, two oils, and podcast is called Opinion Science, which you can
get anywhere. And so most of those, like I said, are our
interviews with social scientists, but some of them are more narrative explorations of big
ideas in social psychology with some cool stuff hopefully on the horizon area, so
you can find that you know, all the places wherever you're listening to this,
just go ahead and type in opinion science and you'll find me there too.
Oh great, all right, And like always, you can find us
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