Dr. Laura Wants You to Stop Whining

Radio icon Laura Schlessinger, Ph.D.--"Dr. Laura" to her 20 millionlisteners—is more popular than Howard Stern, but no less controversial. Like a mythological creature who is equal parts therapist, rabbi, and drill sergeant, Schlessinger chides, cajoles, and sometimes condemns her callers—whatever you do, don't I tell her Your problems are due to an unhappy childhood. She's been hailed for reviving public discourse on character and deeded for her gruff approach toward callers whose actions don't meet her standards. (Even Rush Limbaugh doesn't call his listeners "sluts.") She's got a syndicated newspaper column and three best-selling books; the latest is 10 Stupid Things Men Do To Mess Up Their Lives (HarperCollins). But above all, she's her kid's mom.

PT: You were a family therapist for 12 years and your radio show basically began as a conventional psychology show. Why did you begin concentrating on moral issues?

LS: I was never thoroughly conventional. But since my conversion to Judaism, over three years ago, I've become much more interested in advocating moral and ethical behavior in spite of whatever psychological turmoil is present. To me, there's no excuse for behaving unethically. What's happened is that we've forgotten the benefits of a moral framework and instead imagine all our problems to be psychological. More than that, behaving morally has a beneficial long-term effect on one's happiness and mental health. That's why I "preach, teach, and nag" about morals on the show.

PT: Many people still think of the show as "radio therapy."

LS: My producer, Carolyn Holt, screens the calls, and she asks, "What moral or ethical dilemma are you struggling with?" And if their problem doesn't fit into that format, they don't get on the air.

PT: Tell us more about the link between moral health and mental health.

LS: That's why I wrote the book, How Could You Do That? Emotional turmoil is real. But ultimately we decide the course of our lives by the ethical decisions we make. A woman might call and say, "I'm dating a married man." And some psychologists might say, "Gee, we go back into your past and we find that your dad was not there, so maybe you're going after a father figure." But you're not justified in contributing to the breaking of vows and the breakdown of that family because you need a father figure. If you spend your time and energy trying to attain what you didn't have as a child, you never grow. So if you sit with the pain of not having a dad and work through it in some constructive way, you'll have a much better life. I went so far with a caller as to say, "Do you remember the commandment, Thou shalt not covet?" And she was stunned that she had obligations to behave responsibly regardless of her own desires. I talk about values that are obviously Judeo-Christian based. But one does not have to be proselytizing a particular religion in order to uphold values that are therapeutically positive.

PT: Why does morality have to be based on religion at all?

LS: You get very religious people who behave immorally, you get very moral people who don't seem to have a foundation in religion. Ultimately, I think you have a better chance of a moral life when it is within a religious context because being involved in a religion constantly challenges you to think about what you're doing. It keeps you on your moral toes.

PT: One key to understanding your value system is your habit of identifying yourself on the air not as a therapist, but as "My kid's mom." [Her son, Deryk, is 12.]

LS: I had a tremendous revelation when I finally got pregnant. Having a child is the ultimate [education in] giving and in being responsible for someone other than yourself. When I went back to work after Deryk started school. I mentioned on the air the people who work with me, because we're a team. I said, Carolyn Holt is this, so-and-so is that, and when I got to me—it's obvious that I'm the host, right? And it just flowed out of my mouth: "And me, I am my kid's mom." It's the most important thing that I do.

PT: Does your husband ever feel just a little jealous that you place so much emphasis on your son?

LS: No, because we have the same philosophy. I'll tell you a story. When we first got married and talked about getting pregnant, we were watching something on PBS about life boat ethics: you have a boat that only holds 20 people, and you have 25. Do you put 25 in and everybody dies, or do you throw out five and kill them? I turned to Lew and said, "We have our kid, we're out in the ocean, and you can only save one of us, the kid or me. Who would you save?" Mind you, I'm not pregnant yet. My husband, not being stupid, refused to answer. I said, "I'd save you." He looked stunned. He said, "Why?" And I said, "We could always make another baby."

Then I got pregnant. I woke up in the middle of the night and remembered that whole story. I woke Lew up. He got all hysterical; he thought I was giving birth. I said, "Do you remember the show about life boat ethics? Well, how long can you tread water?" Because I realized something important: your child is your first responsibility. It isn't that my marriage isn't important, or that my husband isn't my life's blood. It just means that for both of us, it's our primary responsibility. And he laughed, and said he was wondering how long it would take for me to realize this. He's such a nice man. He is his kid's dad.

PT: Our culture has become increasingly fluent in psychological theories, but we also use them as an excuse for our behavior. We have the whole victim culture. And you're a force against that.

LS: I believe we should be inspiring ourselves to be better, not excusing ourselves for acting bad, no matter what our circumstances are.

PT: On the other hand, you and I are lucky in that we have careers and lives that we enjoy. How does the average person deal with the fact that life isn't set up to allow everybody the opportunity to have this?

LS: Well, actually it is. There is no average person; we all have special gifts. I was watching a show on A&E about the bombshell who was with Marilyn Monroe in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes.

I'm blocking her name. Howard Hughes hired her for The Outlaw and put her in that silly bra.

PT: Jane Russell.

LS: Jane Russell. Frankly, she was not a very good actress. But do you know what she did to make her life meaningful? Forty-three thousand children were left orphaned in World War 11, and she got them homes in the United States. She started an organization called WAIF that was responsible for bringing 43,000 children here, children who owe their lives to her. That is her legacy. Not that silly movie. And not her big boobs.

Now, what can the average person do? There's always something magnificent. It may not be famous, but famous is not the measure of magnificence.

When some guy doesn't like his career but he loves his family. he has found it.

PT: Not everybody is that lucky...

LS: I don't think luck has anything to do with what anybody does. Luck is when there is a tornado and it misses your house. But I don't think luck is an issue in terms of how you build your life.

PT: Wouldn't you agree that people who grow up, say, in an inner city housing project are going to have more obstacles than other folks?

LS: That's one reason religion is so important. I mean, you know nothing about my life and I'm not going to tell you much, but there is no life without obstacles, tragedies. Many of my callers are wonderful role models for the idea that no matter what you have experienced, you still have choices.

PT: But some people have more choices. I certainly had more than most.

LS: And there are a lot of people who grew up with a lot of choices who became drug addicts. Not everybody with terrible problems dissolves under them. That's what I mean about the tenacity of the human spirit over experience and circumstance. I am, as you can tell, an optimist. There is no limitation you can't make something out of. Look at Christopher Reeve. He has to rely on his intellect and his character, and obviously he has a lot of both.

PT: We should talk about your popularity. Your audience has grown to more than 20 million listeners a week. One reason people listen to your show is that wrestling with a moral issue, whether or not one agrees with your opinion, is valuable and even fun.

LS: Yes, that is the point. I get people to think. If I just wanted to be entertaining, I would dance.

PT: Is that something we should look forward to?

LS: No, trust me...I take the show very seriously. Because we have this time on the air to focus on how to be not just human animals but moral animals.

PT: On a less noble level, it's also satisfying to hear someone whose behavior has been dubious get their due on the air. It's astounding, though, how many callers initially seem surprised at your being critical of them. Why are they so oblivious to this possibility?

LS: Well, it shows you--and I don't mean to sound arrogant--how needed the show is. There are so many people for whom the idea that there are some moral rights and wrongs is an astonishment. But that's part of the breakdown of family and the throwing away of religion.

PT: Your on-air manner is sometimes almost that of a parent speaking to her children.

LS: Clarence Paige, the liberal syndicated journalist, wrote a really interesting article a year ago. He called me the "national mommy." So you're right.

PT: Why do people need the radio to hear that parental voice?

LS: Because they're not getting it at home. I am thunderstruck on a daily basis I get people on the phone whose mothers are drunks, druggies, whose mothers abandoned them, or shacked up with three different guys in a row and hauled the kids around each time they wanted a new boyfriend. I'm hearing things that I didn't hear 15 years ago on the air.

PT: How do you balance being your kid's mom first with having this demanding career?

LS: I'm resolute, and I live by what I speak. I get up at five o'clock in the morning so I can work a couple of hours on my column or on a book. So I get several hours of work done before anybody else in the house is awake. I get everybody else up, and we sit down and have breakfast together. We read the paper. We talk about what's in it. We talk about religion. Deryk goes off to school at 7:30, and I don't leave the house until ten. So I have more time to work. I'm home from work by four, when Deryk gets home. Deryk does his homework, we take him to karate, we have dinner, and I don't do any work at night because it's family time. The only thing I wish we could have is a dog. Until dogs learn how to use kitty litter, forget it.

PT: You've been criticized for calling people names like "bimbo" and "slut" on the air.

LS: I got an interesting letter from a priest about six months ago. Initially he was shocked that I used phrases like "shacking up." But he kept listening to the show and he began to understand what I am doing. I am very clearly defining the difference between sacred and profane. He said, "I'm still shocked but I get it and I like it. I just could not do it in church."

PT: Some critics have also complained that your Ph.D. is in physiology rather than psychology.

LS: I wonder what the agenda of the person is when they do that because they know darn well from the flaps of my books that I have a postdoctoral certification in marriage and family therapy from USC and I'm licensed to do therapy in California. I don't have a Ph.D. in psychology. So what? Neither does a psychiatrist.

PT: In 10 Stupid Things Men Do To Mess Up Their Lives, you referred to couples therapy as "a conspiracy." For a therapist, that's a strange statement.

LS: The point I was trying to make is that therapy is an art, not a science, and it's very dependent on the people doing it. And we've had a trend where therapists' attitudes were very pro-female, so that the way women talk about feelings was considered the right way. And masculinity became an unhealthy thing. I don't think that was fair. Men are profoundry sensitive, but they deal with their feelings in an entirely different way.

PT: Speaking of men, I was surprised to learn that your male audience is larger than your female audience.

LS: It's about 52 to 54 percent male.

PT: Why is that?

LS: Historically, shows dealing with relationships were men-bashing. That's why the men weren't listening. And I came along and I bashed whoever needed it. Nondenominational bashing. And the men found a place where they could be comfortable. I hit them over the head when I think they've done something wrong. But they see a fairness.

PT: You frequently get quite emotional on the air. You are obviously touched by some calls; you're disgusted or angry about others. You run the full gamut of emotions in three hours.

LS: Whatever I feel, I'll do, except if it seems inappropriate. I can't fake emotions, but I'm very good at controlling them. At times I've had to control sobbing. I had a woman call who had just spoken to her doctor and learned she had ovarian cancer. She's 26 and has four kids. And she's giving me the first call.

PT: This happened recently?

LS: About a year ago, but geez... that's when you want magic. We just talked as mother to mother. But I had to control my crying because I was there to help, not to cater to my own angst. That was one of the most awful experiences I've had on the air. Twenty-six. ..

PT: In a way, your show is part of the trend where people confess everything publicly.

LS: But they're not calling to confess something. They're calling to struggle with ideas. In explaining the idea, they have to explain what actions their idea took them to. They may have done something inappropriate or bad. But the audience is not being voyeuristically entertained so much as they're identifying with a very human struggle.

PT: Do the calls still surprise you?

LS: Every day I'm surprised by how far people will go. It's amazing how people can turn off their moral side like a little switch.

PT: You're good at sensing when callers are hiding their mistakes or making excuses.

LS: That's my psychology background.

PT: But at times I wish I could hear a little more about their problems.

LS: The problem is not always important to me. In How Could You Do That?, I give examples where the caller never told me the problem. For me, the way the person thinks is the problem. The trouble they got into is merely an example of where that thinking can lead. "I ran my car into a tree"--well, we could talk about how much blood there was and how the lights broke. I know that's interesting. But for me to help that person, I need to talk about how they think and make decisions. Exactly what happened I don't need to know, and it isn't even important.

PT: On the show you stress that people are too focused on immediate gratification. Yet when people talk to you on the air, they do get a quick answer to their problems. This seems to be a contradiction.

LS: If they come to me for a quick fix, they don't get it. In the short amount of time I have, I give them a philosophical concept. That's not a quick fix. If I tell you, "You're two hundred pounds overweight, you have to exercise," you could say, "Aren't you giving me a quick fix?" Obviously not. The fix is slow, even if the idea is readily available.

PT: Who are your heroes?

LS: Victor Frankl, Harriet Tubman, and one of my old patients whose name, for obvious reasons, I cannot give.

Here's Harriet Tubman...a slave, never knew her parents, sold like a bag of potatoes many, many times. Beaten. Treated worse than the animals on the farm. And in spite of all those experiences--talk about a dysfunctional family!-she was intensely courageous. She was responsible for hundreds of slaves getting to the North.

Victor Frankl: going through five concentration camps.

And this particular patient of mine. To me, they epitomize the tenacity of the human spirit over any circumstances. If they can rise above abuse, the Holocaust, and slavery, then our whining is misplaced. Whenever I get whiny, I think about the three of them and others.

PT: What do you want to be doing five years from now?

LS: The very same thing. I'm going to be doing this posthumously. I'll get personal here for a moment. As a little girl, I [felt I had] to do something meaningful. And I wouldn't talk to anybody about that because I thought it sounded odd. All the kids talked about getting a boyfriend or a car, and I kept struggling with why I was alive, what life means. Psychiatry can explain certain things, but it cannot give you answers to the questions of purpose and meaning. I kept struggling.

Now I'm doing exactly what I was meant to be doing, and I take it not as a job, but as a profound obligation. I feel as though I'm home. This smells of bread in the oven. I don't know how better to explain it. So the question of what do I do next denies the importance of what I'm doing now. There is no next. There is more of the same.

PHOTO (COLOR): Dr. Laura