Writer Shrink: Rx for Scribes
by Charles Lyons,
from the November 8, 1999 issue of "Variety"
HOLLYWOOD -- Screenwriter-turned psychotherapist
Dennis Palumbo, 48, sits behind an oak desk in his spare but homey office
in Sherman Oaks, Calif., awaiting his next client.
Palumbo is not your everyday therapist: He not
only has a patient ear but also a penchant for helping writers wrestle
with their demons.
That's rare in a Hollywood culture that tends to
think mostly about numero uno.
And it's hard to think of a case of a once-successful
writer who has laid to rest some of his own creative ambitions to help
others find theirs.
In his writing heyday, Palumbo co-wrote "My Favorite
Year" with Norman Steinberg and worked regularly on "Welcome Back Kotter."
Palumbo also co-scripted the first series episode of "The Love Boat."
While other assignments followed, Palumbo came
to realize that something was lacking in his life. He needed to reinvent
himself. But how does one go from screenwriting to psychotherapy?
Turn of events
On a trip to the Himalayas, writing a script for
Robert Redford, he saw what simple and stressless lives the people of Tibet
live. He came back questioning his own motivations to succeed on Hollywood's
terms.
And then, one afternoon eating lunch at Le Dome
on Sunset Boulevard with a producer, he thought of how he wanted to be
at the psychiatric clinic where he was doing volunteer work with schizophrenics.
And the epiphany came: There is a world outside of screenwriting.
Palumbo, at the time in his early 30s, continued
writing television pilots, but he also enrolled in classes, fell in love
with therapy and after six years became a licensed psychotherapist.
In development
Drawing from his struggles, Palumbo has developed
a client base of mostly scribes and a science to surviving the writer's
life.
"The writer's life has its own set of demands,
equally valid and important, that must also be attended to," writes Palumbo
in one of his 50-odd columns that appear in the Writers Guild of America
magazine, Written By.
In order to help a writer overcome procrastination
or writer's block, Palumbo explores the scripter's relationship to his
family and his views of himself.
Palumbo believes that often procrastination is
a defense mechanism against being successful.
"By being successful," he says, "a woman client
of mine was in danger of becoming someone that her family would dislike.
Becoming more successful than her father, she unconsciously felt she would
injure her father."
More than many studio executives or producers,
Palumbo understands a writer's ego needs, but he also appreciates the process
of becoming a writer: It means "groping" toward something, embracing doubt
and recognizing that with creativity comes struggle.
"To my mind," writes Palumbo in a column, "the
most important requirement is the true, personal engagement with the work
itself, the sheer love of the practice of your craft."
But Palumbo, who still writes book reviews and
articles and is working on a novel, prefers to help scribes tap into their
own creativity rather than to write screenplays and television himself.
"I do not have a million stories of how I have
been screwed," he says. "But I have been there and done that."
>> Back
Copyright 1999-2001, Variety. Reprinted with
permission.
Contact: dennis@dennispalumbo.com
