Therapist [Paperback]

I didn't even know this eye-opening book was still listed on Amazon until someone pointed it out to me. What a shame that it's out of print.

In it, the courageous Ellen Plasil details her horrifying experiences with "Objectivist psychotherapist" Lonnie Leonard, a manipulative sexual predator who nevertheless somehow managed to pass muster among the ranks of Ayn Rand's "Objectivist" movement (with the blessing even of the movement's "official" psychotherapists).

Plasil's upsetting account of Leonard's monstrous behavior should be read not only by those interested in the misuses and abuses of "psychotherapy," but also -- and especially -- by those who still think Rand's "Objectivism" might somehow be philosophically respectable if only it were purged of some of its personal elements.

On the contrary, those "personal elements" infect very nearly the entirety of Objectivism, and Leonard's behavior (particularly his manipulative technique) is demonstrably connected to Rand's own "philosophical" premises.

And the Objectivist _movement_ (for the propagandistic support of which most of Rand's nonfiction writings were expressly developed) was never anything more "respectable" than a psychologically totalitarian personality cult that allowed Rand and her protege Nathaniel Branden to exercise personal power over their unwitting victims in the official name of "reason." Objectivists won't like being reminded of this book's existence and will undoubtedly claim that Leonard wasn't an exemplar of Rand's principles. And it is true that Rand would have been horrified by Leonard's behavior.

Nevertheless that behavior was merely a physical implementation of the mindrape Rand and Branden had been committing all along, as described in the posthumous Rand biographies written by the two Brandens. Readers familiar with Objectivist history will also see parallels with Rand's manipulative treatment of her own unemployed and dependent husband in securing his "permission" for an adulterous sexual affair with Nathaniel Branden -- and with her self-serving contention that any _real_ man should have found her sexually irresistible even if she were eighty years old and in a wheelchair.

This interesting approach to romantic love was, of course, offered in the name of "reason," and that is just how Leonard presented it to his own victims. Nor is it an accident that the movement tended to attract the sort of "true believer" who would fall for such stuff. Objectivists may say that Plasil herself (and Leonard's other victims) should have known better, but they will merely be calling attention to their movement's callous and utterly irresponsible treatment of those whom Rand would (and did) dismiss as, quite literally, subhuman.

And the fact that the morally corrupt Leonard was able to pass for so long as "one of them" says something crucially important about the movement's standards and purposes: namely, that it _is_ awfully hard to tell a devout Objectivist from a narcissistic, manipulative sociopath. I wonder why. (Hint: it was hard to tell Rand from one too.)

At the very least, "Objectivism" has a tremendous (some of us would say impossible) burden of proof to meet. Anyone who still sees any merit in "Objectivism" should try to scare up a copy of this forgotten book -- and reconsider.

This was an important book in my regrouping after harmful therapy.

It illuminates the dangers of the paternalistic model which the psychotherapists call healing. Power corrupts.

Blaming Ayn Rand or her philosophy, Objectivism, for the misdeeds of Dr. Lonnie Leonard, is like blaming Jesus, or his philosophy, Christianity, for the misdeeds of Christian serial killer Robert Yates (which, by the way, were a lot worse than those of Leonard).

The other reviewers claim that adherence to Objectivism MUST lead to the behavior exhibited by Lonnie Leonard, but they fail to explain why most Objectivists (including many mental healthcare professionals) DON'T behave that way. The fact is that Lonnie Leonard pretended to be an Objectivist, and he fooled a lot of people (including some real Objectivists) into thinking that he was. Being an Objectivist (or practicing any other philosophy) is no guarantor against being fooled by a clever fraud.