Benjamin Weininger; Known as ‘5-Cent Psychiatrist’

Dr. Benjamin Weininger, an author known as the “5-cent psychiatrist” because he set up a counseling booth on the streets of Los Angeles, died Saturday at St. Francis Hospital in Santa Barbara. He was 83.

Weininger had been suffering from a bleeding ulcer, said his daughter, Jean, a free-lance writer in Berkeley. “I am not afraid of dying at all,” he said in a 1979 book entitled “Aging Is a Lifelong Affair.

Weininger attended medical school at the University of Illinois and later crossed paths with some of the most influential psychiatric pioneers in this country. He helped introduce Buddhism to the American psychiatric community when he invited Indian philosopher Jiddu Krishnamurti for a series of lectures in Washington and later moved to Ojai to be near him.

Weininger, who lived and had a private practice in Santa Barbara, founded the Southern California Counseling Center in Los Angeles, offering low-cost therapy to drop-in visitors. He retired officially from the center in 1985 but continued to see occasional patients who fondly called “Dr. Ben” until his death.

In the mid-1970s, intrigued by Charles Schulz’s cartoon showing the Lucy character in a makeshift booth with a sign advertising therapy for a nickel, Weininger decided to try it himself.

“When I do brief therapy, first I put my watch in my pocket and my body becomes an ear,” he said at the time.

A lifelong armchair philosopher, Weininger published a collection of his aphorisms, called “Why Salt the Peanuts?: Sayings of the 5 Cent Psychiatrist.” His favorite, he said in a 1979 interview: “When children are young, they step on your toes. When they’re older, they step on your heart.”

Besides his daughter, he is survived by his wife, Janice Chase, and three other children.