Stutz

Jonah Hill’s documentary on Phil Stutz

Notes on the documentary Stutz: tools to be used at the moment the difficulty arrives, and the three conditions Stutz says cannot be avoided.

Notes in Google Docs.

Phil Stutz is a psychiatrist, and Jonah Hill, who is his patient, made the film about him. What separates Stutz from the therapy the film sets him against is that he hands over tools: short visualizations to be used at the moment the difficulty arrives, rather than insights arrived at slowly over years. His starting claim is that three conditions cannot be escaped by anybody, so a usable method has to work in their presence: pain, uncertainty, and the requirement to keep working.

Concepts

• Part X. The inner voice that blocks action and passes judgement. Stutz treats it as permanent rather than curable, so the work is to act against it repeatedly instead of waiting for it to quieten.
• The String of Pearls. Each action is one pearl on a string, and every pearl counts the same. Doing the thing counts for more than doing it well. Each pearl also contains a dot, the imperfection that arrives with any act.
• The Shadow. The part of yourself you are ashamed of. It is addressed by facing it and speaking to it, which removes the effort spent hiding it.
• The Maze. Being held up by comparison with somebody else, waiting for a fairness that is not coming. The exit is an act of your own rather than a settlement.
• Radical acceptance. Look for what can be taken from an adverse event instead of contesting that it happened.