Hollywood on the Couch: A Candid Look at the Overheated Love Affair Between Psychiatrists and Moviemakers

by Stephen Farber, Marc Green

Psychoanalysis radically transformed twentieth-century culture, but nowhere has the Freudian science been embraced with such giddy fervor as in the movie mecca. In this wry, penetrating book, veteran reporters Stephen Farber and Marc Green take a hard look at the mutual infatuation between moviemakers and psychiatrists. Here is the story of the intimate relationship between Marilyn Monroe and Dr. Ralph Greenson, the flamboyant analyst who tried to "adopt" her into his own family. And Martin Grotjahn, the psychiatrist who examined Vivien Leigh, has spoken candidly to the authors about Leigh and her husband, Laurence Olivier - as well as his other star analysands Warren Beatty and Danny Kaye. Dr. Judd Marmor, who treated mogul/embezzler David Begelman, defends his own controversial involvement in studio politics during the brouhaha. Farber and Green untie the many bizarre entanglements between eminent psychoanalysts and their celebrity patients, starting with May Romm, the colorful "Queen of Couch Canyon," who parlayed her role as David O. Selznick's personal analyst into a plum assignment as his adviser on Spellbound. They chronicle, for the first time in print, the bittersweet fate of Dr. David Rubinfine, banished by the psychoanalytic establishment after he abandoned his wife to marry his patient, the brilliant comedienne Elaine May. Provocative new light is shed on America's most famous therapy addict, Woody Allen, and the sexual roundelay that shocked the world. And they incisively profile Dr. Milton Wexler, whose exclusive therapy group included Jennifer Jones, Carol Burnett, Sally Kellerman, and Dudley Moore, and who brazenly defied convention to write screenplays with another patient, director Blake Edwards. Drawing upon firsthand interviews with more than 159 prominent members of the psychiatric and filmmaking communities, Farber and Green have pulled together a massive amount of material to tell the startling, sometimes comical, sometimes scandalous sto

352 pages, Hardcover

First published November 1, 1993

Reviews

[Susan Rothenberg · Rating 4 out of 5]

An interesting history of psychoanalysis, other forms of psychotherapy from Freud and his disciples through to the latter part of the 1900's and the interplay with Hollywood people ranging from actors to writers, directors, and producers, both therapeutically and socially.