Psychologist Story in NYT Comes Off as 'Just Plain Nuts'

There is a terrific Gary Larson cartoon (right) showing a psychiatrist jotting notes down about his patient who is talking while reclining on a couch. On his notepad, the shrink is writing, "Just plain nuts!" Well, that is the feeling of your humble correspondent about psychologist Lauren Slater after reading the beyond bizarre recollections of her "love life" in the New York Times. And why on earth did the Times even publish her sanity challenged screed? Were they hoping the shock value would help boost their sagging circulation? In any event, I must warn the reader about continuing further. To read Slater's much too personal account could cause you to want to take a scorchingly hot shower to wash away all filthy memories of her sordid life: 

I COULD chalk it up to getting older, the fact that sex interests me these days about as much as playing checkers. But the fact is I’ve never much liked sex, even though it has, on occasion, captivated me. Says my proverbial therapist: “Sex threatens you, Lauren. You feel overcome.”

Another distinctly less sexy possibility is that I have never much liked sex because, when all is said and done, there’s not much to like. I mean, really: What is the big deal? Especially when it’s with the same person, over and over again; from an evolutionary standpoint, that simply couldn’t be right. I, for one, have always become bored of sex within the first six months of meeting a man, the act paling for me just as the sun pales at the approach of winter, and as predictably, too.

Too much information.

I met and fell in love with my husband for his beautifully colored hair, his gentle ways, his humor. We were together many years, and so sex faded. Then we decided to marry.

Predictably, almost as soon as the engagement ring slid onto my finger, I fell in love with someone else. I fell madly, insanely, obsessively in love with a conservative Christian man who believed that I, as a Jew, was going to hell. We fought long and hard about that, and then had sex. This is so stupid, it pains me to write about it.

And it pains me to read about it.

And yet this affair, I sensed, was necessary for me to move forward with my marriage. It was a test. I believed, but could not be sure, that just as sex had cooled for my soon-to-be husband and me, it would cool with this man, with any man, no matter what or whom — in which case my fiancé was the person I wanted to marry.

Except suppose I was wrong? Suppose there was someone out there with whom I could have passionate sex the rest of my life? So I continued with my conservative Christian, and we had fantastic, obsessive sex while the whole time I waited to see when (or if) this affair would run out of fuel. I prayed that it would, so I could marry the man I loved.

Um, just curious, Lauren but did you run this story by your hubby before completely humiliating him in the pages of the New York Times?

Actually, I never had intercourse with this man, though we did just about everything else. He did not believe in sex before marriage. Therefore, when my fiancé asked me if I was “having sex” with someone (why was I coming home at 3 a.m.?), I could answer “no.” On the Christian man’s end, when his God asked him if he was having sex with someone, he also could answer “no,” and so we both lived highly honest, righteous lives filled with perpetual sex.

Ah! The old Bill Clinton defense:  "I did not have sexual relations with that woman, Miss Lewinsky."

But then the inevitable happened. Sex with this man turned tepid, then revolting. While the revolting part was particular to this crazy relationship, the tepid part was wholly within my experience and proved, for me, that there is no God of monogamous passion. Thus freed from the tethers of this affair, I returned to the gentle arms of my pagan husband. We are going on our 10th anniversary. He wants hot sex. I turned tepid long, long ago.

And such a great anniversary present you are giving him with this story about cheating on him.

I have no answers for how one exists with almost no sex drive. A gulf of loneliness enters the marriage; the rift it creates is terribly painful. My sincerest hope is that once we make it through these very stressful years, assuming we come out the other end, my husband and I will be able to reconnect.

Until then, I could get treatment, but I’ve had so much treatment — for cancer, for depression — that in this one small area of my life, can I claim, if not health, then at least the absence of pathology?

 As well as a complete absence of sanity.

My first orgasm happened decades ago when I was 19, in a rooming house with a broody bad boy who had a muscular chest and a head roiling with glossy curls. We both loved the Grateful Dead. Every time I slept over, we woke in the mornings and listened to “Ripple,” the clearness of the music, the pure simplicity of it, affirming for me again and again that I was part of a people, a species, capable of creating great beauty.

Way too much information so let us delicately skip over the next few seedy paragraphs in which Ms Slater treats us to the sordid details about her "broody bad boy."

I am a woman in love, but I am not in love with sex. I am in love with glass and stones, with my children, my animals. I am in love with making, as opposed to making love. Someday, I hope to build a house. And inside this house I want to live with my family — my children and animals and husband, whom I love so imperfectly, with so many gaps and hesitations.

The Grim Reaper, who for me is not death but mental illness, visits me from time to time, drawing me down with his sword. And each time this happens I never know if I will return to love. And each time I do I am more grateful than the time before. And so I see my life — my large, unwieldy, disorganized life — as a banquet. So much! So rich!

I AM a captivated by things, by solid, actual concrete things that can be assembled, made, whether books or babies. For me, sex does not even come close to the thrill of scoring gorgeous glass for a window I will use, of hearing the grit as the grains separate and the cut comes clean and perfect.

Sex cannot compete with the massive yet slender body of granite I excavated last week, six feet long, this sedimentary stone, packed with time and stories if only it could speak. I’m going to spend months carving it with a silver chisel. I am going to figure out a way to make this stone into an enormous mantel under which, in the home I share with my husband and the babies we made, our fire will flicker. The stone will give off waves of warmth in the winter, and it will keep the night-coolness captive all through the summer days.

I imagine my mantel, my windows, my glass, my gardens. I cannot believe how lucky I am. I have so very much to do, such wide and persistent passions, so little time in which to explore their many nooks and curves. Here. Now. Don’t bother me. I’m busy.

Or as you obviously tell your husband:  "Not now.  Not ever. I have a headache."

The only thing more surprising than the much too candid look Lauren Slater provided about her narcissistic private life is the fact that the Times published it. Just plain nuts!

UPDATE: Apparently Lauren Slater has a history of egotistical unlikeablity. Here is an excerpt about her from a 2007 Boston Globe article:

Suing writers? No, that is not something I would approve of.

There is a New York-based outfit called the Penn Group that specializes in ghostwriting and college counseling. Lately it has taken on a new specialty: threatening to sue, and in one case suing , writers with whom it has had beefs.

Since the beginning of the year, Penn has been pursuing a $1.8 million lawsuit against Somerville-based psychologist/writer Lauren Slater for breach of contract, tortuous interference with business relations, and slander. Slater, a high-talent, high-maintenance individual, is author of "Prozac Diary" and "Opening Skinner's Box." If you've been reading Rosie O'Donnell's blog -- and who hasn't? -- you would know that Slater helped write O'Donnell's books, "Find Me " and "Celebrity Detox: The Fame Game."

The papers filed in Penn Group v. Lauren Slater illustrate the familiar stages of a relationship breakdown. There is the initial euphoria when Brad and Evan Bailyn, the two young brothers who run Penn, land the services of the award-winning writer. (To Slater: "Great stuff! You've really been coming through with all these projects lately . . . Evan.") Then comes disenchantment, when, after several ghostwriting jobs, Slater objects to the 60-40 revenue split. (To Penn, from Slater: "I think the money thing is sleazy and its [sic] definitely what keeps me on edge." Also: "I cannot accept any arrangement in which the Penn Group's cut is more than 20 percent.")