Shrinks who help screenwriters get past mental block

Dana Goodyear has a good piece in this week's New Yorker on therapist Barry Michels and psychiatrist Phil Stutz, whose niche is helping Hollywood creative types. "Michels, in the words of a former patient, is an 'open secret' in Hollywood," she writes. "Using esoteric precepts adapted from Jungian psychology," Michels and Stutz "address complaints common among their clientele: writer’s block, stagefright, insecurity, the vagaries of the entertainment industry."

"I had one guy who was terrified of public speaking," Michels says. "He had to learn to make more passionate love to his wife. If he could expose himself to his wife and really let go, I knew he’d be able to speak publicly." He hands out three-by-five index cards inscribed with Delphic pronouncements like “THE HIERARCHY WILL NEVER BE CLEAR.” His starting rate is three hundred and sixty dollars an hour.