What if…men will literally go to therapy instead of going to therapy?
On Jonah Hill, Stutz, Strangers To Ourselves, and yes, Puss In Boots
Hello!
Well well well, if it isn’t another case of “I was about to add something (the actual definition of “boundaries”) to the ol’ algorithm-free reco list and realized I had more to say about it.” I’ve actually known I had a lot to say about this for a while. But I long ago moved the little note in my Figjam that said “Stutz x Strangers To Ourselves x Puss In Boots x the limits of diagnosis and the stories we tell ourselves” to the “INTENTIONALLY ABANDONED 😈” pile. I had stared at it for months and felt out of my depth. It would be hard. Would require research, or something like it. So I killed it before trying.
Then yesterday, I was talking with a friend about the Jonah Hill and Sarah Brady situation. (Overview is here if you are not cursed with being tethered to the internet.) And in riffing on my original idea, I realized I should at least mess around with it. So here’s that messing:
Pain, Uncertainty, Constant Work
My OG idea, born of consuming Stutz, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish, and Rachel Aviv’s phenomenal Strangers To Ourselves within the span of a few days, was centered around stories. It was about the limits of self-knowledge in the quest for self-improvement. The stories we tell ourselves vs. the ones reinforced back to us. The class/race/gender divide between who gets told “the good stories” and who gets fucked by the therapy industrial complex. It was also about provider/patient ethics (one could even say “boundaries”).
I hold the line that Stutz — Hill’s Netflix documentary about his therapist, Phil Stutz — is a fascinating piece of media. Sure, Stutz provides digestible action-oriented frameworks that are likely appealing to those who aren’t used to receiving similar things from their therapist. He does little doodles in session. Imagine a boardwalk sketch artist, but instead of getting a bawdy caricature, you get a cute little drawing to serve as a visual tool for navigating trauma or other troubles. Good stuff. Things get actually interesting, though, unpacking the ways in which Jonah inserts himself.
Stutz starts out as an advertisement for therapy as a concept. Hill wants to spread his therapist’s ideas far and wide, make therapy “accessible” to the masses. But partway through, he comes to the conclusion that this is disingenuous. He’s acting his way through. The limits of autobiography on display! So they remove the wigs (yes, actually), reveal the green screen, and start doing stuff that resembles actual sessions. Stutz and Hill also disclose that they regularly go out to dinner together and say “I love you.” The “therapy for the masses” plot, thin to begin with, is fully lost. Hill’s privilege provides him with a cozy therapy cocoon where he does not worry about deductibles and superbills. He gets nothing but “the best.” But when does “the best” become “enabling?” Unclear, but in hindsight, likely swiftly. When does “love” cross into “ethics violation?” I’d argue immediately.
Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us
As much as Hill wants us to believe otherwise, therapy is a transactional relationship. By design. With Stutz, he has a pretty sick little deal (although I can’t imagine navigating “friend time” vs. “I am paying you to do therapy” time). How that transactional relationship turns out is not a universally positive experience. In Strangers to Ourselves: Unsettled Minds and the Stories That Make Us, Rachel Aviv explores how the narratives told to us by mental health professionals can both hurt and heal us. On the surface, it’s not dissimilar from Stuz. In the prologue and epilogue, Aviv mines her own history, detailing the time she spent hospitalized at age six for anorexia. But the core of the book is years and years of deep reporting on individual patient journeys. A chapter for each.
I could try and summarize each patient, but it would be a disservice to Aviv’s work. There is not just nuance and complexity but also the cited autobiographical details from each patient’s journals over often decades of treatment. In Strangers to Ourselves, the limits of memoir are eclipsed by the limits of societal norms. No one is intentionally performing for future Netflix subscriber consumption, yet everyone is being judged on scales for which the rules are harsh and constantly shifting. The takeaway is not “therapy is bad” or “therapy is good,” but that therapy is not a silver bullet — that the stories that heal us and harm us can be damn near impossible to differentiate when we’re unwell.
That’s Not What “Boundaries” Are
Beyond larger narratives, words also matter. It’s not just the stories we tell but how we use words to pathologize our lives. I am not going to argue for any kind of policing of language here. But it’s worth taking a second to acknowledge how therapy-speak’s infiltration into culture at large is not only absurd but, in a lot of ways, ruining our relationships. I know this, you know this. We don’t need to get into why reality contestants misusing words like “trauma” or “gaslighting” is, at best annoying and, at worst, legitimately harmful. Sarah Brady sharing all of Hill’s “let’s turn therapy words into weapons” texts is just another example of this harm.
There’s a meme that goes, “Men will literally ____ instead of going to therapy.” The meme implies that “going to therapy” is the exalted choice over, say, “spending millions of dollars buying a social media app” or “becoming an Arizona drug lord who wears a pork pie hat.” But which caricature of a man is a better member of society? Someone who spends hours on Wikipedia each day learning about the Roman empire from his mattress on the floor? Or someone who incorrectly uses the therapeutic concept of boundaries to control and emotionally abuse their partner? I know who I’m picking.
Maybe the Real Therapy Was the Friends We Made Along the Way
Do you know who doesn’t go to therapy? Puss in Boots. (This might seem like a hard pivot, but stick with me.) On the surface, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish is another story of a man (cat-man, I guess) who will literally _____ instead of going to therapy. He will go on epic quests with dozens of convoluted quests in pursuit of quickly forgotten valor. He will run away and fake his own death. He will move in with a cat lady and shed his titular “Boots” identity. He will LITERALLY DIE EIGHT TIMES.
But what gets Puss living with any kind of human vulnerability is not making an attempted reputation-bolstering documentary about his therapist. It’s making it to the other side of a panic attack with an earnest new friend. It’s relinquishing control in his fight with death. It’s acknowledging that therapy does not save a man, does not save anyone. It’s realizing the power of found family, of true community made through not therapy-speaking your way to robotic relationships but collective action in the face of adversity. No one says the word “boundaries.” Everyone lives happily ever after.
This newsletter brought to you by:
Some books I’ve read lately but have not and probably will not write my usual reviews for, namely Body Work by Melissa Febos and What My Bones Know by Stephanie Foo. Strongly endorse both, especially if you’re interested in anything I wrote about above.
My old therapist, who spent a solid 25 minutes of a session with me several months back discussing Stutz. If you live in Illinois and need a new therapist, I cannot recommend Erica Haynes enough!!
Deeply mediocre cold brew at home. (I may or may not be working on an extended index of grocery store cold brews, watch this space.)