SMOKING GUN: Dr. Venus Nicolino needs to lightup between sessions. (
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Think that psychologists opening up their therapy sessions for reality TV would be controversial?
Guess what? It is.
Almost everyone seems to be weighing in on the decision of three accredited therapists — marriage and family therapist Dr. Eris Huemer and clinical psychologists Dr. Gregory Cason and Dr. Venus Nicolino — to expose themselves (and their patients) on Bravo’s new reality show “LA Shrinks,” which starts tonight at 10.
“The fact that every professional is coming at me — before they have even seen the show — is pissing me off,” says Cason, who is seen crying in the promos.
He has already been fired by one of his patients for doing the show.
“This longtime patient, who is intimately involved in the media, said it was very degrading for me to do such a thing,” says Cason.
Although Cason says many professionals validated his decision to do the show and that Bravo guided him through any ethical quagmires, he got some intense negative feedback too.
“I called an attorney at my malpractice company and wanted to talk to him about the ethics of doing the show and he said, ‘That sounds like a horrible idea. You should never do something like that.’
“Then he cussed at me and hung up the phone. It took me two days to get over it.”
The hunt for the right therapists took almost four years , and filming took three months from April to June last year.
The production company, Intuitive Entertainment, picked the patients from a pool of applicants who, they say, were put through a “screening process.”
Doctor and patient did not meet until they were sitting in front of the cameras for their first session.
Psychology Today magazine last month blasted Bravo for “LA Shrinks”: “The idea being, think your life sucks? Just look at your own therapist’s life. Now there’s a hot mess.”
Huemer, a tall, stunning blonde, who sits in her modern suite of offices high above Wilshire Boulevard, is savvy about the fame game and says “LA Shrinks” was exactly the kind of project she hopes will transform the image of therapists.
“We are opening Pandora’s box into the lives of therapists,” she says. “I feel therapists are put on this God-like pedestal, like we have all the answers.
“People come in and spill their lives, and I think you need to do a little more research into who you are allowing to help you.”
Therapy on TV is hardly new. There’s Dr. Drew and Dr. Phil, and dozens of others — including celebs like Gene Simmons and Tatum O’Neal — who have allowed cameras into their therapy sessions.
But this time it’s different. Instead of watching the patient, this time we’re watching the shrink.
As a practitioner in the land of movie stars, psychotherapist Barbara Bienstock hates the idea.
“To expose yourself in that way is counterproductive to the role of a therapist,” she says. “And the damage a patient can experience from knowing too much about their therapist can undermine years of the person’s therapy.”
The therapists on “LA Shrinks” each has a different reason for joining the cast.
Huemer interned at E! and “Extra” before taking up a career in therapy, and had been in talks with other networks for her own show before signing on to “LA Shrinks.”
Cason had several reasons including his previous positive experiences as a media talking head. He also wanted to “explore his own uptightednss.”
Nicolino is on a mission to do something with her life and help other people.
“I am really focused on [not] drugging children; 20 percent of children in America are diagnosed with a mental illness and a disease, however many are on drugs.
“I don’t know, but it is problematic.”
Nicolino bares her own private battle with prescription medication.
“I disclosed [on the show] things that I had not disclosed publicly before about my own struggle with being labeled diseased and disordered and losing 20 years of my life to psychopharmaceuticals,” she says, calling the meds “the candy they try to sell you in between soap operas.”
Bravo’s senior vice president of original programming, Shari Levine, admits she was shocked by the controversy surrounding “LA Shrinks.”
“I think within the professional community people have strong opinions about what it is to demystify therapists,” she says.
“Some people think it is not a good idea,” she says.
“I think it is more a professional debate than a consumer one.”