Dr. Debora Phillips 1938-2014

  One of America’s most important and innovative therapists, Dr. Debora Phillips, died Wednesday in San Francisco.

Best known for her book, still in print 36 years after its first publication, “How to Fall Out of Love,” her many appearances on Oprah, and her hundreds of academic articles, lectures, and for her famous patients, Dr. Phillips insisted that therapy should be held to the same standards as medicine; that therapy should be fast, specific, and effective.  Many of her innovations are used by therapists around the world today.

 Dr. Phillips was born and grew up in Brooklyn where she won her first beauty contest at age 3. The Brooklyn Eagle newspaper commented at the time that “she was the first 3 year old we’ve met who could discuss Corot’s use of green.”

Dr. Phillips was educated at Barnard, with a masters from Rutgers and a doctorate from San Francisco’s Institute for the Advanced Study of Human Sexuality.  She was six months short of finishing her Ph. D. thesis in Princeton, frustrated with the inefficiency of conventional therapy, she left to do a residency under Joseph Wolpe, the “father” of Behavior Therapy at Temple University Medical School.

Despite a prolific and productive career as an academic, a therapist, an author and a teacher, the center of Dr. Phillips life was always her family. “Nothing,” she said, “is as intellectually challenging, physically demanding or as emotionally rewarding as raising a child.”

Her deep compassion led her to become a therapist, to heal the anguish and suffering in, as she said, “the problems of being human.” She treated friends (and they remained friends) and it was not unusual for a patient at the conclusion of therapy to ask if they might become friends.

           Dr. Phillips began her academic career as Assistant Clinical Professor at the Temple University School of Medicine and was the Clinical Assistant Professor of Psychiatry at USC’s medical school, and the Assistant Clinical Professor of Child Psychiatry at the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University.   

   

         She was a Director of the Princeton Center for Behavior Therapy, a Director of Clinical Training at Temple University School of Medicine, a Director of Princeton's student counseling program and a director of Temple University School of Medicine’s sex therapy program and a director of the Beverly Hills Center for Anxiety and Depression.  Most recently, she was the Director of End Teen Cruelty in New York City, a program she developed to end bullying after the shootings at Columbine.

     

         She had a private practice in New York City, Beverly Hills, San Francisco and Paris.

    

         Dr. Phillips wrote three books, How to Fall Out of Love, Sexual Confidence, and How to Give your Child a Great Self Image.

         How to Fall Out of Love with Robert Judd, first published in 1978 and re-issued in a revised 2^nd edition last year, and How to Give your Child a Great Self Image, 1989, are both still in print. As Oprah said, “I love your stuff because I know it works. If I had a broken heart I know you could fix it.”

        Dr. Phillips also published widely in academic journals, published articles in Harper’s Bazaar, Mademoiselle, Redbook, Glamour, and The New York Times.  She was a consultant to NBC-TV Children’s Television Workshop, the Wesley-Westminster Foundation at Princeton, and Charles of the Ritz.  Her invited lectures (for IBM, American Bar Association, R. F. Kennedy Foundation, American Psychiatric Foundation, etc. etc.), her papers presented, courses developed, and her popular workshops (for Princeton, The Kinsey Institute, Temple University, University of North Carolina, etc. etc.) filled sixteen pages of her C. V.

              She has also appeared on Today, Oprah, Good Morning America, the Phil Donohue Show etc. etc. and has been the subject of innumerable radio interviews.

             Her first marriage to Physicist William Phillips, Ph.D., ended in divorce. Her second husband, Psychiatrist Dennis Munjack, Ph.D., died of cancer in 2008 after of 24 years of marriage.    

              Dr. Phillips is survived by her son Ronald Phillips, his wife Frances and their children Lily, Lenora, and Berry.  And by her daughter, Wendy Phillips. And by her brother Michael Phillips and his wife, Karen

The Volvo Years

Back to the Land, grow your own weed.  Hey man, get your head in the right place and you'll be young and beautiful forever.

I quit my job at JWT.

How To Fall Out of Love (still in print after all these years) was selling well, I had a great advance on Sexual Confidence. I had a log cabin on Hatch Pond, a loft in Soho in New York City, a Volvo 544 for the commute, a Pantera, and a Shelby Mustang in the garage and hardly any brain at all.

To be continued.

The New Sexual Confidence

Research is fun when you're doing a sex book.  Dr. Phillips (who knows what she's talking about) and I are re-writing Sexual Confidence which we wrote ages ago, and a lot of interesting stuff is turning up.

         You're probably too young to remember the sexual revolution set off by the pill in the sixties. There were flowers in her hair, peace, love and understanding and swingers and hippies got to screw anybody they fancied all the time. That was the dream anyway.  The reality was that sex with everybody didn't happen and could seriously damage your mental and physical health if it did.  The party came to an end with herpes, chlamydia, and AIDs.

       Plus a lot of people felt left out of the great swinger and hippy party and elected Republicans to "take back American moral values."

     Along comes the internet and now you too can watch sex all the time with everybody in the form of porn.  All you have to do is click.  Zero risk of VD.  But, porn spreads all kinds of rubbish like women are victims and "the prostitute model of love making" where it's over when the man comes.

              
              Now here's the good part.  A new study (by Michael J. Rosenfeld, Stanford University and Reuben J. Thomas, The City College of New York) shows 25% of couples today met on the internet.  And while the assumption among a huge number of dating adults is that they'll have sex on the first date (if it's any good it's a miracle because good sex is all about affection, love, trust and communication and how much can you trust a stranger?) the rise of internet dating means that some of the old courtship and getting-to-know-you romance is coming back via emails, texting and twitters.  Instead of instant sex, internet couples are wary, take their time, reveal slowly. This could be good.

              Of course they lie a lot, but that's another story.

       

Sexual Confidence

I wore the t-shirt in the Bay to Breakers marathon in San Francisco and nobody looked twice.

                          We thought Sexual Confidence was a great title.  The head of PR at Houghton Mifflin gave me a T-shirt that read "Author of Sexual Confidence" in black flock letters against a red backgrouind.  

                          I had my first doubts when I wore it in New York Citry.  Some people would cross Lexington Avenue to talk to me.  But others would cross the street to the other side.

                          Sales in bookstores were slow. 

       So one rainy Monday I went into Scribners, a major bookstore on 5th Ave. to see who was buying the book.  It was raining so I was wearing a raincoat.  I hid behind a pillar next to the Self Help section.

                           Right off the bat I got lucky.  A shy, pale young woman picked Sexual Confidence off the shelf, flipped through a couple of pages, and started for the cashier.  I stepped from behind the pillar and proudly said, "I wrote that book.  Would you like me to sign it.?"

                           "ARRRRRRRGGGHHHHHH!!!!!!!" she screamed.

                           I stepped back behind the pillar. 

                           She still bought the book.    

                          We sold tons of copies through book clubs, but the book was a slow mover in bookstores.