A telephone shrink seems made in heaven for the Hollywood industry. : All the Lonely People

When I think of remote therapy, I think of people like Toni Grant babbling away on radio like a runaway disc jockey, blending show-biz and psycho-hype into the kind of counseling you might expect to find at Bruno’ World Famous Dead Dog Saloon.

I think of flat-voiced callers who ask whether it is OK to have sex with the family cat, and a radio shrink at the other end wondering what the cat has to say about it.

I think of a program more tailored to amassing an audience than to offering any significant help to those troubled souls who find it necessary to talk to radio voices in the first place.

But I may be changing my mind.

What is causing me to change my mind about remote therapy is a conversation recently with one Audrey Levy, a psychologist who does much of her work by telephone.

I came across a small ad in the Hollywood Reporter that offered telephone counseling out of Beverly Hills by calling 2-RELATE, credit cards accepted.

As I read it, I began to feel moisture forming on my chin, and it wasn’t until I finished the ad that I realized I was drooling.

Drooling over a potential essay subject is about as close as a satirist ever comes to falling to his knees and thanking God.

The idea of a psychologist advertising in a show-biz newspaper for telephone counseling and accepting plastic in payment is almost too good to be true.

I mean, it’s so L.A.-ish.

Then, however, I began to think about it. There’s phone dating, phone praying and phone, uh, fornicating, so why not phone therapy?

In a way it is more symptomatic of the emotional pathology of our age than anything I can think of, reaching out in pain not to a friend but to a disembodied voice.

Reaching out, in essence, to Ma Bell.

So I visited Audrey Levy in her upstairs Beverly Hills office not far from the most expensive street in the world and found a woman who understands what time and depersonalization have done to us.

“Time,” she said, “is what we have the least of, and anonymity has become the most comfortable form of communication, where one doesn’t have to worry about looks or actions.

“In a way, I’m only utilizing what already exists. For those who need help, eye contact and touch are best. But the telephone is better than nothing.”

Unlike radio counseling, Levy charges $24 for every 15 minutes, although the charge varies depending on the patient’s ability to pay. Some pay nothing and others, especially those who come into her office, pay a lot.

“If they are blowing $100 a day on cocaine, for instance,” she said, “they can afford to pay me.

“Or if they are overweight, they are obviously spending too much on food, so they can pay me and lose weight at the same time.”

What she avoids, she says, is becoming a caller’s companion, whether or not they’re paying.

“Sometimes they just want to talk for hours, lonely people who have never learned to be their own best friend, but I burn out if I let them go on. I’m not their pal, I’m their therapist.”

Telephone counseling became a function of Levy’s training at Boston and Antioch universities and she brought it to Beverly Hills when she opened her office about eight years ago.

She discovered in the beginning that not everyone had time for a visit or they were physically unable to get out, or they just couldn’t take discussing their aberrations with someone face to face.

So she began taking their calls from home and from work, and a few months ago put that ad in the Hollywood Reporter.

Using a trade paper, by the way, was a deliberate action because Levy learned early in the game that a show-biz town is eternally atilt with stormy instabilities and sinking egos.

A telephone shrink seems made in heaven for an industry that feeds on instant gratification and instant solution. I want mental well-being and I want it now.

Levy and her partner, James Spencer, take calls 24 hours a day. Sometimes there are none, and sometimes they come in barrages, from all those troubled, lonely people out there who need a voice to talk to when Toni Grant isn’t on the air, even if they have to pay for it.

“It isn’t really loneliness,” Levy said. “It’s a feeling of inadequacy that fosters a terrible dependency, and then loneliness. Loneliness is the surface symptom.”

Does she feel gimmicky being a kind of teleshrink?

“There’s a whole population of people out there who need help and the phone is a way to reach them. Shouldn’t we, after all, use what we have?”

Sure. I suppose. Reach out and touch someone, friend.

Humanity, linked by electronic tones, becomes increasingly more isolated, unit by unit, but within each cell the individual somehow thrives.

An instrument of survival in this case is only a voice, but what the hell. Whatever gets us through the night.