Vegetarians Don’t Eat Meat and Proper Psychologists Don’t Gossip About Celebrities!

To many non-vegetarians the concept of what constitutes meat is a bit of a grey area.  Many moons ago, not long after becoming a vegetarian I visited a friend’s house. His ever-hospitable mother offered me a ‘lovely chicken sandwich’ and I had to tell her that I no longer ate meat. Unperturbed, she offered corned beef on the assumption, I guess, that I could just focus on the corn. After I respectfully declined that I was offered wafer thin smoked turkey. Presumably the thinness and the smoking process eliminated the meatiness. We eventually settled on a cheese sandwich which she dressed with a little salad on the side and some crisps (potato chips). . . roast chicken flavour. Ironically, they are one of the flavours that actually don’t contain meat. However, I’m not sure that she knew that.

Ultimately I suppose the meat non-meat thing is a values clash. I remember watching a discussion on a chat show talking about vegetarians. A meat-eater stood up and said ‘How dare vegetarians force their values on their children’. It hadn’t occurred to him that meat-eaters do exactly this!

So what’s all of this got to do with celebrities. Well, as a psychologist I’m often called upon to offer some insight on media stories, whether news stories or general discussions on social issues. Over the past couple of weeks, surprise, surprise, I’ve had a lot of calls to discuss ‘infidelity’. When I ask, what’s inspired the story (as if I don’t know), of course, it’s the alleged extra marital affairs of a well-known sporting personality.  .  . okay you know it’s Tiger Woods so I may as well type it.  Now I tell them that I don’t talk about celebrities lives as it’s unethical.  I don’t know what’s going on in the minds of celebrities and neither do the two-bit hacks who cough up pithy insights for self-aggrandisement. My refusal comes as a shock, even for the producers I routinely work with. It’s become so normal to gossip about celebrities that it’s difficult to get the point across! Psychologists should not be gossiping and speculating on the inners workings of people’s minds! If they are clients then it’s confidential, and if they are not clients then they have no insight anyway. It’s a conversation I’ve had many times with fellow psychologist Dr Petra Boynton who shares my view and endures the same nonsense. Basically it brings the name of psychology into disrepute and it’s against the British Psychological Society (BPS) guidelines. Programme producers will complain ‘Well Dr ‘Pops-up-a-lot’ discusses celebrities all the time. I reply ‘Yes I know ‘it’ does and being a member of the BPS ‘it’ should no know better’! What invariably follows are a series of ‘what ifs’ of the ‘wafer thin smoked turkey, corned beef’ variety. Each time I decline until they run out menu choices. If it’s got celebrity in it. . I’m not going to bite, get it? They only time I make an exception is when everyone jumps on the bandwagon and bullies a celebrity, as in the over-night fame of Susan Boyle and subsequent press intrusion and ‘expert’ (fakexpert) speculation. . . even then it’s only to counter the BS.

I’ve read of so-called reputable psychologists (read ‘gossipologists’) offering mental health diagnoses of celebrities. I’ve also seem them discussing the mental states of celebrities’ young children. Nothing they say is ever meaningful and it’s certainly unethical. It’s gossip, plain and simple! The fact that someone has a degree in psychology or a PhD in ‘the social impact of jogger’s nipple’ does not mean they have any valid insight into the mental state or deepest motivations of any celebrity.

Psychologists should abide by a common set of values that shouldn’t be prostituted for a one-liner in ‘Celebrity Life’ magazine. Surely these values should be higher than picking over the bones of skeletons in celebrities’ closets. Where juicy, meaty titbits of gossip are concerned, shouldn’t psychologists be ‘vegetarian’?

Links:

Celebrity Body Language

Therapists Boasting of  Celebrity Clients

Thera-pist Off with Boasts of Celebrity Clients?

Ok, if you are  a celebrity and you see a therapist (or psychologist) ‘gossiping‘ about celebrities on TV and in magazines, and you feel you need to see a therapist, would you go to the gossippy one, or would you go to someone who you felt would respect client confidentiality and abide by a code of ethics or at least appeared to? It’s a big question.

So how come the ‘gossipologists’ usually claim to have a celebrity client list? Surely if they did then it must be of celebrities who never read newspapers, magazines or watch television. Now this doesn’t seem likely. So could it be that the (un)professional gossips are putting a bit of ‘gloss’ of their CV, otherwise known in some quarters as ‘telling lies’? Surely not.

Now if you are  NOT  a celebrity and feel you need therapy would it make you suspicious of all therapists if you see some therapists on TV, that you suspect of lying and making up shit and stating the bleedin’ obvious at the same time as boasting of a celebrity client list but still gossiping about celebrities?

The conclusion has to be that anyone who gossips about celebrities has never met any of the people they are gossiping about and so has no real insight whatsoever except in their own imagination. Could it be construed that they are exploiting their professional credentials just to bask in some one else’s ‘vainglory’? Does this mean that really they should see a therapist?  And, if the gossip-cum-therapist is a kind of celebrity, on account of gossiping on TV about celebrities, shouldn’t they be treated like other celebrities?  Should other therapists be able to comment on the level of pathology inherent in the gossipologists’ delusions?

And wouldn’t the therapist/gossip be deeply suspicious of other therapists? Why you ask? Well, because they have  seen some therapists on TV gossiping about celebrities and worry because they are kind of celebrities themselves on accounting of gossiping on TV about fellow celebrities and therefore conclude that all therapists, must unprofessional, unethical and tell lies, and will gossip about them on TV? Or could it be that they have just looked in the mirror?

Just asking.

For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.

1 Corinthians 13 v 12