Shelley Duvall - Phil McGraw Interview Analysis

hello this is dr grande today's question is can i analyze the 2016 shelly duvall phil mcgraw interview and statements that duvall made about that interview in 2020 just a reminder i'm not diagnosing anybody in this video only speculating about what could be happening in a situation like this if you enjoyed this video please like it subscribe to my channel and consider supporting me on patreon i'll put the link to patreon in the description for this video this story involves two people shelley duvall and phil mcgraw i'll give a quick background for each of them shelley duvall is an actress who is active from 1970 to 2002 she is probably best known for her role in the movies popeye and the shining both released in 1980 as well as the 1987 movie roxanne based on the interview with phil mcgraw and some other sources it appears as though duval has some mental health symptoms but i've never heard anything regarding a diagnosis so i've never heard a specific diagnosis mentioned phil mcgraw became a doctoral level psychotherapist in the late 1980s and started doing trial consulting a few years after that specifically he is a psychologist although he hasn't been licensed to practice since 2006 he met oprah winfrey because he was doing some work for her and eventually was on her show then he started his own show dr phil on his television show he functions as an entertainer he attracts guests to the show and exposes their thoughts feelings and behaviors he seems to really like emphasizing unusual and embarrassing behaviors he offers a good deal of criticism as well my understanding of his position is that he's not personally providing therapy rather simply raising awareness about different symptoms and dynamics now moving to the interview in 2016 phil mcgraw interviewed shelly duvall the interview would become controversial here's a summary of the interview which originally aired on november 18 2016. mcgraw talked about how shelley duvall was a popular actress quite successful then became isolated and withdrawn he said that the special the interview documents his efforts to help shelly duvall connect with different treatment services she was forgotten and he couldn't simply walk away from her after the introduction the interview actually starts at the beginning of the interview we see that duvall seems somewhat disoriented paranoid and a little argumentative her speech was odd disorganized tangential and she seemed to be demonstrating a flight of ideas mcgraw's questions were designed to facilitate her talking about her unusual beliefs she avoided some of the questions but did answer or attempt to answer several others she said she needed to get the bermuda triangle off of her because she did not want a hairy chest phil mcgraw seemed confused but continued on with his questions even though i think that answer is pretty clear in the sense that it's indicating some type of fairly unusual belief and that would have been a good time just to stop the interview duval said they will hurt me tonight it was not clear to whom she was referring she made other statements that were not connected to the conversation like who is doing off-duty police work in black and white she spoke about in detail a hornet that entered into her body she said the internet had compromised the defense department she talked about the fbi firearms the irs on the topic of her co-star in the movie popeye robin williams she said that he was still alive he was a shape shifter themes of paranoia and persecution seemed evident in her narrative mcgraw analyzed her speech he talked about clang associations this is an association where people say something that rhymes with something else they said but there's no other logical connection between the terms an example that phil mcgraw gave from shelly duvall's narrative was she said i live in one two two four five my home address a45 is a type of pistol so she connected the 45 and her address to the 45 in the cartridge duvall mentioned many famous people and characters for example john hurt bette midler and the sheriff of nottingham mcgraw tried to get her to focus he wanted her to see a physician so after going on some time and letting her discuss the unusual beliefs he started focusing the conversation toward treatment duvall was worried that the physicians would strangle her mcgraw made a deal with her she would get checked out by the physicians and no murder would be involved as arranged by the show duvall traveled with a nurse to a treatment center before they made it to the airport the police were called because duvall was complaining the police verified the nurse had the authority to transport duvall duvall spent three days at a treatment center but she would not cooperate they sent her home where she was connected with local professionals who would use alternative treatment this was the conclusion of the special the conclusion of the interview this takes us to february of 2020. shelley duvall comments on that interview from 2016. referring to phil mcgraw she said i found out the hard way what kind of person he is then added my mother didn't like him either several people had told her not to go on that interview it doesn't sound like duval had fond memories of her time with phil mcgraw many celebrities blasted mcgraw or otherwise expressed disapproval about the interview the interview was considered one of the worst of his many blunders over the years others would include the britney spears incident the questionable handling of bailly a young woman he kicked off the show because she hurt his feelings at least it seemed like that's what happened he launched the so-called catch me outside girl and of course phil mcgraw believes in polygraphs which are based on pseudoscience and of course conveniently help build the drama value of his show i'm going to present the arguments both for and against this interview being a good idea so both exploring reasons that can be justified and reasons it can be condemned i'm not a fan of phil mcgraw so i will start with the argument for so i'll look at the justification first a representative of the dr phil show made a statement about the interview to a news outlet the interview was an opportunity to share relatable useful information and perspective with our audience they added with no one else offering help our goal was to document the struggle and bring amazing resources to change her trajectory as we have for so many over 19 years i guess this argument essentially says at least we did something not a high standard but okay i get it it is a point in the justification column phil mcgraw did try to be careful at times during the interview he was not completely reckless for example when duvall said that she saw robin williams alive the context created by her other behavior made it seem as though she was suggesting that she saw williams after his death but mcgraw jumped in and clarified that she was talking about seeing robin williams prior to his death not after he could have just let that go and made her look worse so i thought that was good he made the effort to spare her from one more statement that could have been embarrassing mcgraw eventually focused on getting duvall help and he was footing the bill he made arrangements for her to go to the treatment center he sent a nurse with her i was okay with that part he seemed to be handling the treatment side pretty well although one could argue should he be in that position in the first place providing treatment but that's a separate argument the interview did raise awareness about certain symptoms that seemed to resemble some type of disorganized or delusional thought so in that way i thought it was helpful you get to see what appears to be paranoia and persecutory beliefs and it was vivid like there were clear statements that seemed odd and unusual now looking at the reasons against this interview being a good idea so the condemnation the negative criticism many questions seem designed to get her talking about unusual beliefs it is like mcgraw knew in advance what to ask about even if he could justify asking a few of these questions he just went on and on getting her to say more about her odd thoughts and beliefs almost like a police interrogation where they get an incriminating statement and they just keep pressing it because they want more it makes sense in the context of a police interrogation it doesn't make sense in any type of clinical context but again phil mcgraw would probably argue that he was not conducting any type of therapy so there was no clinical component to the interview he really didn't seem interested in a dialogue rather he just wanted to extract statements that would expose the most dramatic potential mental health symptoms almost like he was trying to embarrass her recording this interview was one thing but why air all the embarrassing parts so he could have conducted the interview the way he did but simply left out most of those statements during the interview duval appeared to be vulnerable it didn't look like she understood what she was saying she might not have appreciated the fact the interview would be viewed by millions of people my last item in the condemnation column if mcgraw simply wanted to help he didn't need to record an air an interview to do that his behavior embarrassed duvall which is not a good strategy if you really want somebody to get treatment would phil mcgraw have used that strategy of duvall was a family member or close friend of his what if she was his business partner i find it difficult to believe that he would have i think a much better strategy would have been to simply pay for the treatment and ask duvall after she was treated if she would mind sitting down for an interview to talk about her mental health symptoms and treatment experience an interview that would occur when she was in a different state of mind overall even though there are some redeemable components from this interview i think this was a bad idea and not something good for shelley duvall if one removes the caring and compassionate component from the field of mental health counseling and other related professions and then exposes the mental health symptoms of others to a wide audience one ends up with an interview that looks something like this the phil mcgraw formula seems to be something like shaming people into feeling better like some new type of treatment embarrassment counseling this type of treatment lives up to the first part of its name but always fails at the second those are my thoughts on the shelly duvall phil mcgraw interview please put any opinions and thoughts in the comments section they always generate an interesting dialogue as always i hope you found my analysis of this topic to be interesting thanks for watching

Channel: Dr. Todd Grande

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Length: 11min 51sec (711 seconds)

Published: Wed Feb 17 2021