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Found an OLD OLD People from 1978. And Holy S**t!

From Alice Cooper to Rod Steiger, Shrink Eugene Landy Candles the Most Celebrated Heads
By Robert Windeler
September 25, 1978 - People


The Oscar-winning scenarist had a problem: A TV script was overdue, but he was suffering from writer's block. It was an obvious case for Dr. Eugene Landy, 43, the Beverly Hills star shrink. Landy promptly imprisoned the writer in a phoneless, windowless room for 2½ days, opening the door only to shove in sustenance or to allow the patient to relieve himself. The script got written.

A clinical and social psychologist, Landy eschews such classical Freudian props as the couch or even an office. Instead, he applies round-the-clock therapy, as in the famous case of Brian Wilson, the creative genius of the Beach Boys, who had withdrawn into overfed self-exile in his Bel Air bedroom. For 13 months, 24 hours a day, either Landy or one of 14 assistants was with Wilson, directing his every action, from eating (they padlocked his refrigerator) to composing. "He was a master gamesman who had contrived for years to stay in bed," diagnosed Landy. The fee: $90 an hour. (Landy's rates have since gone up to $2.50 a minute.) The Beach Boys eventually discharged Landy—prematurely, he claims—because they needed Brian in the recording studio. In any case, Landy sourly says the LP in question, The Beach Boys Love You, was a flop. But even Landy's detractors concede that his methods helped make Wilson functional again.

He has applied variations of the saturation/servitude therapy to Alice Cooper, Weight Watchers founder Jean Nidetch and Rod Steiger. Richard Harris was so exultant he even dragged the doc onto TV talk shows to proclaim, "He literally saved my marriage." Numerous other names prefer the traditional shrink-patient anonymity.

The reason so many celebs go into treatment is not just because they can afford it or that it's trendy. The real explanation, says Landy, is that "everybody caters to stars, and they are isolated from reality. They lose some of their ability to function as normal people do. They're always on, so my treatment is always on too." His supporting cast depends upon the severity of his case load but sometimes reaches 30. "I feel," he says, with accustomed modesty, "like a conductor—the Zubin Mehta of psychotherapy."

Landy does hear a different drummer than some of his colleagues. "What some analysts call perverse," he says, "I'll call normal. Homosexuality, for example. It is not an illness. There are no perversities. Extremes, yes. Adults who rape and kill a 2-year-old child, for instance. But adults who reach out for and give love to each other in one form or another are not perverse," he believes. "Compare that to the chick who kisses her horse and calls it 'my darling'—and people accept that as normal!"

With drug abusers, however, Landy is more traditional. "A patient who comes to me with a drug problem," he explains, "must sign a commitment that if I find anything at all in his system after treatment begins, I am to turn him over to the police." Landy has not had to take that step yet, he reports; his patients are so "completely tied up they'll do everything I say."

The only child of a Pittsburgh physician and his psychodramatist wife, Landy was born with dyslexia, an abnormality of perception that causes things to appear backward. He could not read until he was 13, still cannot spell, and sometimes reverses numbers. (He notes that Nelson Rockefeller, Patton and Einstein, and a disproportionate number of actors and performers have been dyslectic.) Landy dropped out of school after sixth grade but later took entrance exams and earned a B.S. in chemistry at Los Angeles City College, studied psychology at the University of Mexico and took his doctorate at the University of Oklahoma. He married a fellow student and fathered a son, now 16. While in training he worked as an A&R (artist and repertoire) man at Coral, Decca and RCA records, was a production assistant on Liberace's old TV show, and wrote for Teen Screen and True Confessions. "California," he says, "always felt right to me from the moment I got here."

After helping instruct Peace Corps, VISTA and Office of Economic Opportunity psychologists in group methods, Landy began working in 1968 as a drug abuse therapist at Gateways Hospital in L.A. Now, in addition to treating the superrich, he also operates a clinic for lower-income patients.

Therapy occupies 60 hours of his week, not counting phone calls from his patients or staffers (some isolation cases ring him up 20 times a day). Still, he manages time to ski, fly and motorcycle, as well as read—from Melville to Vonnegut—and attend Los Angeles Philharmonic concerts. Divorced three years ago, he squires actress Alexandra Morgan, a onetime group therapy patient at his clinic.

Seven years ago Landy wrote a book called The Underground Dictionary. He is currently at work on a novel whose main character, Supershrink, resembles himself. Landy's only problem—not quite yet at the treatable stage—is that he has writer's block.

Wow....

You gotta love that line:

He is currently at work on a novel whose main character, Supershrink, resembles himself.

Nothing new: a 19th c. writer - name escapes me - used to write naked and tell the maid not to bring his clothes back until he'd written a set number of pages.

Supershrink...ha The article is available on People.com http://www.people.com/people/archive/article/0,,20071810,00.html

I have a copy of The Underground Dictionary. (http://s13.postimg.org/71lyysw0n/result.jpg) From the acknowledgements: Finally,to my son Evan, who for months heard nothing but how Daddy couldn't play because he had to work on the book, "Thank you for your understanding; now we can go out on the boat."

There's also a part where Landy mentions the types of people whose lingo he could speak: I was able to talk to bikers, colors, connections, cons, dopers, fags, hippies, hookers, musicians, teenyboppers and yippies. I think Paul Giamatii must've got a copy of this, cause he has a line in the film where he mentions that the book has slang for all those types of people and he says something like "musicians are the hardest to talk to, isn't that right Brian."

I wish that boat had sank.

Really, sir. That's uncharitable, even for Landy.

Fantastic find, petsite. I've linked this topic at "my" MB.

I don't know, but even putting aside what he did to Brian...this is the same guy who regularly drugged and raped another one of his patients.  The man (and I used that term very loosely ) was a horrible abomination of a human being (using that term loosely as well).  I normally don't feel that strongly about someone, but in this case, well...

Did Landy treat any other regular patients, celebs or otherwise, during his 1980s time with Brian?

Who did Landy drug and rape?

Fair play. The only two people I've ever wished dead are dead: Hitler and Saddam Hussein. if I had to choose a showbiz-related personality for candidate #3, Landy would be trailing way, way behind this monster (thankfully also dead):

(http://cdn.images.express.co.uk/img/dynamic/1/590x/jimmy-savile-406159.jpg)


 

If you go back and watch the 1991 “Primetime Live” Diane Sawyer piece on YouTube, she adds at the very end after the piece some additional bits they had dug up, one of which was that they found evidence that Landy allegedly had been receiving therapy for HIMSELF during the 80’s for his own problems, an issue which Sawyer says Landy refused to talk about on camera.

I’m guessing it’s not super uncommon for a therapist to also seek out therapy themselves, but it was still a rather telling additional bit of information.

Not sure who, but I think that admission is what got his license revoked in California.

So, who is that? I thought maybe  it was Soupy Sales at first, but I don't think that's him.

I'm almost surprised Landy and Bill Cosby didn't team up. Two of the biggest entertainment industry-related scumbags of the 80s.

Not to mention the fact that the grammar is terrible.  It should read, "I wish that boat had sunk."  :lol

http://articles.latimes.com/1988-06-26/magazine/tm-8498_1_eugene-landy

It's Jimmy Savile. Read about him here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile

But mainly here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jimmy_Savile_sexual_abuse_scandal

Know what's weird in that LA Times interview? That John Mason stands up for Landy, then 3 years later says he could never talk to Wilson on the phone when interviewed by Diane Sawyer. WTF?

It was.

Inappropriate.

Wanted to bump this since I found the photo from the article online.

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The biggest takeaway from the article for me was that Landy worked as an A&R rep for Coral, Decca and RCA. Maybe this is common knowledge, but I don't think I've ever seen that mentioned before. Those jobs normally weren't handed out to just anybody, particularly sixth-grade dropouts, even back in the sixties. Okay, granted he was in doctoral training at the time, but I'm still curious as to how somebody with ostensibly little in the way of musical training and with no background in the arts or management could land a gig like that.

This struck me.  Brian insists he has writers block all the time, but yet still writes stuff all the time. 

I wonder if one of Landy's idiosyncrasies was that he complained about Writers Block constantly and Brian picked it up while he was being brainwashed... 

BTW am i the only one with an uncontrollable urge to punch that picture?

Your monitor will thank you for your restraint.

I wonder....is  that vanity plate supposed to read HEAD DOC?  Or the more primitive sounding HE A DOC? 

Either one would be a lie and a disgrace to the profession!