JOLLY DAYS

Therapists to the Rich

The rich are different than you and me. They are sicker. Well, not really, but many of their anxieties look trivial compared to the reality based existential fears of adequate food and shelter and personal safety of the poor, or the middle class angst of losing in the rat race and falling out of line.

This article about therapists who treat the wealthy has a lot in it that is not surprising, but it is still fascinating.

Things you might expect as being issues for the rich: low tolerance for frustration, viewing everyone as a member of their privileged entourage (King Ludwig Syndrome), status anxieties within their group, fears derived from their insulated existences…

The Gilded Age narcissism of the young self-made wealthy is almost comical; in trying to reschedule an appointment… “Dr. Karasu said the only time he had available that week was at 7 one night. The executive’s assistant said: “He’s having dinner then. How about 10 p.m.? He’s flying out to the Hamptons, but we’ll send a car for you and you can ride with him and do therapy on the helicopter, and then we’ll send you home in the morning.”

A section of the article had me guessing who the patient might be — Does this sound like Donald Rumsfeld to you? :

The politician would not listen to his therapist.

In fact, nobody — not the Harvard-educated foreign policy specialist who was supposed to be advising him, and certainly not Dr. Karasu — could persuade him that he was wrong. About anything.

It was anxiety that had brought the man to therapy, and both the cause and the symptoms followed a pattern. “He had learned how to maneuver everyone to come around to his point of view,” Dr. Karasu said. “He had removed the foreign policy consultant from his circle after the man had disagreed with him.”

Dr. Karasu saw this as an opportunity to press the patient. “But this person knows more than you,” he told the elected official, a wealthy businessman who had turned to public service, yearning for a greater challenge, after quickly making a fortune in the private sector.

“But I’m his boss,” the patient insisted.

“The issue wasn’t foreign affairs; it was control,” Dr. Karasu recalled. “That was his attitude to me as well: ‘I know what is best because look at who I am.’ ”

posted by Ira Altschiller on Wednesday, July 9, 2008 @ 01:37 PM