BOOK REVIEW / NONFICTION : Shrinks and Stars: Therapeutic Fodder : HOLLYWOOD ON THE COUCH, <i> by Stephen Farber and Marc Green</i> , Morrow, $23, 352 pages

Is there anyone out there who doesn’t read fan magazines of one type or another? Celebrities have fueled the print industry for decades, and of late they’ve expanded their sphere of influence.

Even those of us who think we’re above caring about Hollywood gossip probably aren’t: What’s “Vanity Fair” about, after all, if not telling us things about the rich and powerful that the rich and powerful would prefer we didn’t know?

Authors Stephen Farber and Marc Green figured out two books ago that Hollywood’s secrets were a rich vein that was far from tapped out. First they looked at famous Hollywood families; next, at the “Twilight Zone” helicopter tragedy. Now they’ve delved into the industry’s subconscious, looking at the relationship between outsized egos and the doctors called upon to shrink them down to manageable size.

The two disciplines, it seems, were destined to meet. In 1909, the same year that pioneering filmmaker D. W. Griffith arrived in Southern California, Freud, a pioneer in his own field, accepted an honorary Doctor of Laws degree at Clark University in Massachusetts. In Hollywood, Freud’s theories had not yet earned broad acceptance, but everyone wanted to have a look at him; he was the intellectuals’ favorite novelty act.

All that Hollywood really knew about Freud was that he talked about strange sexual practices and was an intellectual, the perfect combination for a business run by men looking for both attention and respect. Samuel Goldwyn went to Europe in 1924 to offer Freud $100,000 for his help developing a love story for the screen. Freud refused to see him.

The men who ran the movies wanted to exploit Freud, but it was the women who embraced psychoanalysis. Adeline Jaffe Schulberg, the influential agent’s sister and producer’s wife, made the connection between movies and therapists.

Mary Wilshire met Carl Jung and came home to offer her own inimitable style of therapy, which had more to do with Grecian costumes than with piercing insights. Still, the door had been opened, and over the years, one ambitious therapist after another headed west.

Dogged researchers, Farber and Green read up on the best-known of Hollywood’s analysis grads, added their own interviews and boiled down the results; they toss in anecdotes about celebs whose therapy you may not have heard about, and let the reader take a leisurely stroll down neurosis lane.

We get to hear one more version of what happened to Marilyn Monroe and Vivien Leigh (including a frightening tale of an imaginary dinner party where the only real guest was the analyst), of Woody Allen’s endless absorption with therapy, of David Begelman’s attempt to shrink himself back into employability.

We meet Judd Marmor, the analyst who tried to persuade Columbia to keep Begelman, as well as the doctor who injected Robert Walker with the medication that killed him, the one who discovered Monroe’s body and never shook the vague suspicion that he was somehow involved in her death, and a host of others.

What to make of all of this? It’s a voyeur’s treat, and it offers perverse comfort to those of us who lead more mundane lives: Being rich and famous, it seems, is no defense against being miserable; more often than not, all that acclaim makes life even tougher (although obviously, the steep therapy bills get paid on time).

It’s proof, for anyone who still needs it, that Hollywood can warp one’s point of view--even an analyst’s, whose God quotient can soar pretty high, staring at those famous faces asking for help.

But perhaps the most devastating take on Hollywood analysis comes from Frances Lear, magazine magnate and ex-wife of television mogul Norman Lear: “Long-term supportive therapy is parasitic. . . . This one-on-one, $200-an-hour, 25-year therapy is outrageous. The patient thinks, ‘I don’t have to be any better than I am because I am in therapy, and therefore I’m mixed up or sick.’ And the feeling of the people around him is, ‘Well, the patient is sick, so I as wife, husband, child, partner must give the patient his due and allow him to be difficult, neurotic, a pain in the ass.’ ”

A bit harsh, this voice from the waiting room--but there is something about this profile of celebrities and their shrinks that makes you want to go outside and do something useful and finite, like pulling weeds or washing the car.