Should You Watch Dr. Phil? Dr. Phallacy..

In Dom Coccaro's article"Why You Should Watch Dr. Phil" from October 20, he argues that Dr. Phil's critics should give him a try, especially those within Coccaro's age group. He says that many of his peers write Dr. Phil off as a hack and never even watch an episode.

Well, Dom is 22. I just turned 23, so I imagine I am in his peer group. Like his accusation states, I write Dr. Phil off as a worthless hack. Actually, I go farther. I feel Dr. Phil has built a reputation on bad pop psychology that exploits of the problems of the extreme cases in our society and does nothing to actually help a darned person in his target audience. However, unlike his accusation against peers who write off Dr. Phil, I have seen a few episodes.

On one particular episode, I recall how Dr. Phil told a group of eager listeners that everyone had five or six "defining moments" in their life that helped build their character, definite points they could remember and recall as being significant.

This is complete and utter baloney for a variety of reasons. First, not one soul that has ever walked the Earth - not me, not the reader, and not even Dr. Phil - has complete awareness about their life. While one may know more about the past than the future, the level of clarity is significantly below 100%. Character is molded slowly through personal growth and evolution (not to mention biology); this garbage about "defining moments" has no basis in science, social realty, or any other nonfiction realm.

Honestly, when someone starts saying that there are "5 or 6" moments in your life that define a person, the skepticism meter should be flying off the charts. Exposing such dishonest ways of looking at things was a primary concern of Leo Tolstoy's, and constantly his novels seem more realistic to the reader because there are no "defining moments." Characters develop gradually and sometimes regress. People have no self-awareness of when their happiest moments or saddest moments occur. The only thing such simple paradigms do is give someone a thought exercise that gives them the impression of knowing themselves better, when really they're just as clueless as before.