Monica's Therapist Speaks
Carlson, Tucker
Monica's Therapist Speaks by Tucker Carlson Monica Lewinsky's therapist is on the phone from Los Angeles explaining how her patient wound up having an affair with Bill clinton. starting work as an...
...Kassorla will not disclose whether she gave similar advice to Monica Lewinsky...
...And if she's very sick, how do you get a job as an intern, how do you keep your job as an intern, how do you get to the Pentagon...
...Lewinsky's mother, Kassorla adds, "is a banana...
...Could she function in the White House as a person who was schizophrenic...
...Your mommy has left you, she's gone home and told you to be brave...
...They say, 'Oh, you've saved my life.'" The secret to successful lifesaving, Kassorla says, is her rapport with clients...
...It develops...
...Just because you get older doesn't mean that you can turn off the habit you have of believing the authority or the wise boss or the wise daddy...
...This is my nightmare, that Ken Starr will find some loophole or something and come get me talking," Kassorla says, sounding worried...
...I'm the most amazing shrink," she explains...
...And even if she could reveal more about what Lewinsky told her, Kassorla isn't sure she would want to...
...I got a husband who thinks I'm 14...
...As for the suggestion that Lewinsky merely imagined her sexual relationship with Clinton, Kassorla all but scoffs...
...It doesn't hold...
...At this point, Kassorla remains ambivalent about her connection to Monica Lewinsky...
...I'm the strongest, most effective shrink you ever saw...
...Kas-sorla prescribed gymnastic couplings like the Bass Fiddle Position, as well as a grueling regimen of genital exercises...
...And it won't be true...
...It's so seductive, it's so delicious to have a Big Daddy look at you...
...starting work as an intern at the white House, says Irene Kassorla, a Hollywood psychologist who has counseled Lewinsky, is "like your first day of kindergarten...
...I have a cushy life...
...I am not interested in impeaching the president," she says...
...I'd be in the Enquirer as the crazy shrink who crazied the crazy...
...At first you think maybe he just wants to talk to you or something...
...In order to reach the "untamable Maxi orgasm" (comparable in intensity to a grand mal seizure), Dr...
...These days Kas-sorla lives, as she puts it, "like a queen," in "a huge estate, right near [Hugh] Hefner...
...And you know something...
...Tucker Carlson is a staff writer at The Weekly Standard...
...My lawyer told me to say, 'I can neither confirm nor deny any association with any patient,' " Kassorla explains...
...Nor is Monica Lewinsky likely to give Kassorla permission to talk to the independent counsel...
...But if he and I did it, we'd have to have penetration...
...Nice Girls Do spent weeks on the bestseller lists, eventually selling more than 3 million copies...
...By the mid-'80s, Kassorla had become something of a celebrity in Los Angeles...
...Kassorla could have retired from her practice years ago, but she continues to work as a therapist, mostly, she says, because she's so good at it...
...I have a gift...
...It's a palace, nestled between Beverly Hills and Bel Air...
...In fact, says Kassorla, Lewinsky's relationship with the president was not as unnatural as it may now seem...
...If the president asks for sex, Kassorla argues, what employee could refuse...
...Kassorla is both proud of her connection to Lewinsky and fearful that it will disrupt her life...
...No doubt it would...
...She would have to be very sick to fantasize to that degree," says the therapist...
...Irene Kassorla first came to national attention in 1980, when she published a sex manual entitled Nice Girls Do...
...I think he's cute," says Kassorla enthusiastically...
...If I talked," says Irene Kassorla, "it would help Monica...
...Kassorla obviously has affection for Lewinsky, who she believes is being forced to "pick up the tab" for the White House sex scandal...
...And I don't think that even Mr...
...But talk to Monica Lewinsky's shrink for a while and what has happened to Lewinsky begins to make a lot more sense...
...In fact, says Kassorla, who is a longtime sex therapist, Clinton the paternal kindergarten teacher was almost irresistible: "What intern in what country wouldn't if the top guy said, 'You're adorable, you're wonderful...
...Then again, there's always the possibility things might still change...
...In 1985, Kassorla helped develop her own television special, 99 Ways to Attract a Man...
...Nor will she say when the two last spoke...
...And if you think I want to be under Starr's glance or pressure, or be in Washington when my patients need me...
...Billing herself as the "shrink to the stars," she hosted a radio call-in show, made regular appearances on Donahue, and struck up a friendship with Oprah Winfrey...
...Kassorla says that she, a married woman in her mid-60s, can empathize with Lewinsky's attraction to the president...
...Based partly on Kassorla's own experiences with her boyfriend (who was then the west coast editor of Penthouse magazine), Nice Girls Do promised to take readers "beyond orgasm, beyond sexual gratification, and into sexual delight whenever you wish...
...You're an intern in the most important home in the world, and you are fortunate enough to be near the Big Daddy there," she says...
...I'd insist...
...Don't expect to see Kassorla in a grand-jury room soon...
...Can you imagine being this little kid in kindergarten and there's this nice daddy there...
...So far, Kassorla says, her patient has been mischaracter-ized by almost everyone...
...People kiss my hand sometimes when I go on the street...
...And then the thing develops...
...sex is a skill that has to be learned, practiced and honed to precision," she wrote, and many book buyers seemed to agree...
...My life would be over...
...They'll say something idyllic: 'She was a wonderful baby, I was a wonderful father...
...An acquaintance of Lewinsky's says that her counseling sessions with Kassorla began in high school and continued, over the phone, until as recently as several months ago...
...A recent Supreme Court decision shields therapists from testifying about their clients under most circumstances...
...At some point, one of those who spilled her everything to Kassorla was a now-famous pudgy girl from Brentwood...
...There are 250 of you in the class, and all of a sudden the biggest daddy in the place takes you by the hand and shows you how to color, and shows you how to play with the clay, and shows you how to get on the tricycle, and when you fall he picks you up...
...I'm the world's best-known psychologist," she told a reporter at the time...
...It was not a book for beginners...
...While generally enthusiastic about going on television ("I love it, I love it"), Kassorla has said little publicly about Lewinsky since the story broke in January...
...I live in a bloody mansion here...
...It's a very well-established habit that you listen to the boss, that you believe the boss, that you trust the boss...
...They won't even mean it...
...I have Kleenex in every room of my house because my patients come in here and they really spill their everything to me...
...Of course not," snorts William Ginsburg, Lewinsky's lawyer...
...During her few talk-show appearances since, the normally self-revealing therapist has never mentioned that she knows Lewinsky...
...Starr would have the chutzpah to subpoena a physician or psychologist...
...The independent counsel, she says, "is on the right trail...
...I have stories in my little head," confides Kassorla, "that would make your ears fall off...
...We used to play in the sand, blah, blah, blah.' Who knows what they'll say...
...Ginsburg is probably right, and that may turn out to be a shame for his client...
...Her parents," says Kassor-la, "what they say I would never trust...
...I mean, it's pretty nice...
...In 1988, Kassor-la took time from her busy schedule of media appearances to marry Norman Friedmann, a wealthy computer executive...
...I can just see it in the history books: 'This five-foot-two doll from Los Angeles, very nicely trained, brilliant woman, took down Bill Clinton.' I think he's okay...
...Ken Starr, Kassorla seems certain, must have figured this out already...
...I know it...
Vol. 3 • March 1998 • No. 27
