The Esther Perel Phenomenon

By the time my wife and I arrive at the DAR Constitution Hall venue—well in advance of tonight’s scheduled event—the chaos has already begun. Messy lines of people sporting their evening finest—pressed checkered shirts, buffed tan loafers, and sparkling sequined dresses—coil around the building’s classical Roman columns, guests twisting and bumping into each other like well-dressed salmon moving upstream. This is Washington, DC, a town that prides itself on order and discipline, but by the time we squeeze into the nearest throng, it feels more like a Bowery punk rock mosh pit.

For nearly half an hour, nobody, it seems, can find a way inside—until, finally, a handful of ushers dressed in black and white emerge, scattering like sheepdogs to extricate us from our heavily perfumed scrum and guide us into the warm confines of the venue lobby.

“I need a drink,” my wife says flatly as we pass through a pair of metal detectors, making a beeline for a nearby bar cart. I wince as she comes back with a pitifully small cup of vodka tonic, $16 poorer. But I hold my tongue. After all, it’s date night.

Once we settle into our seats, my heart rate begins to slow. Soft pink and purple lights cast a gentle glow over the crowd. Guests chatter between sips of wine, eyes scanning the stage for any signs of life. I’ve been to my fair share of rock concerts, and this feels like a rock concert. But tonight’s main attraction doesn’t shred guitar like Jimi Hendrix or strut like Mick Jagger. And she’s not a rock star—at least not in the traditional sense. She’s a therapist.

Suddenly, the lights dim and a voice bellows through the loudspeakers above. “What you are about to experience,” the voice says, “is a night with Esther Perel. It’s a night where everything can be said, and nothing can’t be said.”

Then, the woman we’ve all been waiting for appears. Esther Perel. The Esther Perel. Couples therapist, New York Times bestselling author, TED Talker, podcast host, enneaglot (that’s fluency in nine languages), and Millennial-whisperer. A slayer of the sleepy dragon that is boring therapy.

Perel glides to the front of the stage with a megawatt smile, radiating a hip, Nouveau York sophistication. There’s the trademark pantsuit—dove-white, a web of golden bangles splashed across her right hand, and a stylish, slightly asymmetrical haircut. If Coco Chanel was reincarnated as a therapist in 2024, she might look a little like Esther Perel.

As Perel waves to the crowd and the crowd roars back, I can’t help but think of an old Beatles documentary I saw years ago, in which a raptured concertgoer sobbed, “I can’t believe I’m breathing the same air as the Beatles!”

I can’t believe I’m breathing the same air as Esther Perel, I think to myself. And that’s when I realize it: I’ve fallen under her spell.

A Star (and Then Some) is Born

Perel’s eight-stop U.S. tour, “An Evening with Esther Perel: The Future of Relationships, Love, and Desire,” which began in April and runs through September, has been a massive hit, packing concert halls with thousands of starry-eyed fans. Of course, a large part of this success is due to Perel’s intelligence, wit, and charm—and some very savvy marketing. “Join Esther for a 3,000-person group date,” her site reads, “to talk about topics we usually only discuss with the lights off.”

But that doesn’t fully explain the Esther Perel phenomenon. How has a therapist captured the public attention to the point where she can sell out concert venues—where people will line up in the cold and buy tiny, $16 cocktails—to hear her speak about relationships, of all things? When did therapists become celebrities? When did mental health become entertainment?

It’s undeniable: therapy is having a moment right now. In March, crowds packed the Syndey Opera House for a discussion on trauma from Bessel van der Kolk. And last year, trauma and addiction specialist Gabor Maté sat down with Prince Harry for a widely televised interview. But some experts say the surge in public interest in mental health is due to the fact that our society is in particularly bad shape, and therapists are in high demand. Nine out of 10 adults believe the country is in the throes of a mental health crisis, according to a 2022 survey from CNN and the Kaiser Family Foundation.

Young adults, research suggests, are hurting the most. According to the American Psychological Association’s 2023 Stress in America Survey, 58 percent of adults ages 18 to 34 say that most days, their stress is “completely overwhelming,” the highest among all age groups. Most say they’re especially worried about the economy, housing costs, discrimination, global conflicts, and climate change.

So perhaps it’s no surprise that young adults have been the catalyst in a resurgent demand and appreciation for therapy, and are helping dismantle stigma in the process. Even pre-pandemic, the 2019 Stress in America report showed that a higher percentage of young adults had received mental health care than all previous generations.

These digital natives are also the driving force behind the rise of clinicians who’ve achieved minor—if not Perellian—levels of fame on social media, enticing viewers with colorful, musical, easily shareable, bite-sized videos that deliver their thoughts on everything from intergenerational trauma to romantic relationships to autism self-diagnosis. Some clinicians have gained hundreds of thousands of followers and millions of views in the process. Therapy has become such a juggernaut on TikTok that the hashtag #mentalhealth has garnered over 75 billion views, and even received its own honorific from the online masses: TherapyTok.

But although public appreciation for therapy may be at an all-time high, some say the concept of the celebrity therapist isn’t really all that new. “In the 1960s and ’70s, therapists had a powerful influence on the culture,” says therapist Bill Doherty, emeritus professor at the University of Minnesota’s Marriage and Family Therapy Program. “There were psychologists like Irvin Yalom who wrote bestselling books, and Hollywood therapists like Dr. Ruth who became household names.” That interest waned, Doherty says, until the arrival of the internet brought new, exciting, and profitable branding opportunities that put therapists back in the public sphere.

But Doherty says there’s a difference between today’s celebrity therapists and those who came before. “In the old days,” he explains, “people would see videos of Salvador Minuchin or Virginia Satir in session and think, Wow, how’d they do that? Now, they’re more impressed with the therapist’s charisma than their clinical skills. The older clinicians had charisma too—and many of today’s therapists are very talented—but these predecessors were exemplars of teachable models, and people built entire institutes around them.”

What’s Your Story?

Perel may be a therapist for the modern age, but she’s also studied under some of family therapy’s biggest icons, namely Salvador Minuchin. Listening to her speak, their influence is clear. Not only does she exude clinical wisdom, but she also deftly brings complex concepts down to earth, not only demystifying and normalizing therapy, but helping people see the connection between what unfolds in her office and what’s happening in their own lives—whether they’re in therapy or not.

“When people come to see me,” she says, slowly pacing the stage, “they come with a story. And each of you has come here with a story about your relationship. Sometimes we hold so tightly to our stories that we confuse them with the truth.” Then, she issues a challenge: “This evening, I want you to bring nuance to your story. What do you want to leave behind? What do you want to change?”

It feels as if Perel has reached into the crowd and grabbed ahold of my heartstrings. These are questions I’ve never been asked before, let alone bothered to ask myself. What is my story, exactly? I wonder. What would I change?

Perel continues to captivate, effortlessly cool and instantly quotable. “We have never been more free, and we have never been more alone,” she opines. She condemns our culture of “emotional capitalism,” where relationships have become reduced to swiping and ghosting and alchemizing people into bundles of statistics as we size them up against other potential mates. “We drown at a thousand options at our fingertips,” she declares. “Do we want too much? No, but maybe we want too much from one person.” I look around the room and see dozens of attendees frantically taking notes, trying to keep up.

Later, the evening takes a particularly emotional turn when Perel asks us to take out our cell phones. “I know this is unusual,” she says, “but certain things are easier to talk about in the dark.” Suddenly, the pink and purple lights fade, and the room turns to black.

“If sexuality was central in your upbringing, turn on your flashlight,” Perel’s voice calls out. Slowly, the room begins to brighten, as hundreds of tiny bulbs flicker to life and throw shadows across the audience. This really is a rock concert! I think to myself. “Now, if it was hidden, forbidden, or obfuscated,” Perel says. Another several hundred lights appear. “If sexuality was violated or misused or abused.” More lights. “And if there was infidelity in your family life.” Even more. There are some whispers of amazement, but otherwise, the arena is silent as we linger in a moment of collective awe and vulnerability.

“Okay,” Perel says with a smile. “Put your fetishes away.”

The crowd chuckles, the lights twinkle and fade, and we brace for what comes next.

Careful What You Wish For

For decades, therapists have been imploring the public to recognize the value of therapy. But now that society has embraced it more fully, if not vigorously, have we reached a tipping point?

David Bowie said it well: fame is a fickle thing. So maybe it’s no surprise that a therapy countermovement seems to be brewing. In recent years, much criticism has come from the conservative right, from the likes of Fox News and Breitbart, who not only argue that psychotherapy has become too bloated, too drunk on its own power, and turned a generation of Americans into fragile, therapy-dependent victims, but that it’s actually the source of our mental health crisis—that we’re only more anxious, more depressed, and more traumatized because therapists have enabled us to be.

In a 2022 publication from Clinical Psychology Review, a handful of mental health professionals referred to the simultaneous growth of therapy and society’s mental health problems as “the treatment prevalence paradox.” Despite the increase in services and public awareness, “mysteriously, the general population prevalence of depression has not decreased,” they wrote, blaming an epidemic of “misdiagnosing distress as depression,” greenlighting ineffective treatments, and bias in clinical trials, among other things.

It might seem easy enough to dismiss these voices as radical outliers, whose wacky ideas could never really gain traction. But they, too, have platforms and book deals and speaking engagements. They have an audience, and that audience is listening.

Take the Sounds Like a Cult podcast, which recently wound up on Spotify’s Top 50 chart, in which host and author Amanda Montell called social media therapists an “emerging cultish group” and a “pending threat” that’s “manipulating our culture.” Or Abigail Shrier, one of the loudest critics of late and the author of Bad Therapy: Why the Kids Aren’t Growing Up, released earlier this year.

“Nobody has gotten more therapy than the rising generation,” she said in a March Fox News interview. “No one’s had more psych meds. No one’s had more talk about feelings. No one’s had more therapeutic parenting, therapeutic intervention in school, and social-emotional learning. And you know what? It’s not doing them any good.” Therapists, she continued, are claiming, “‘Oh, we’re just the firemen. We’re just responding to the fire.’ Not true. They’re the arsonists. They’re the worry-makers, and they’re creating the problem.”

Of course, some therapists disagree. “To say that therapy is the source of our so-called mental health crisis is laughable,” says therapist Scott Miller, co-founder of the International Center for Clinical Excellence. “And the reason I think it’s laughable is because it overestimates the power of the very simple, cultural-bound activity that is psychotherapy. Its theories are embedded in the culture, and if you look back, you can see how the dominant themes and concerns of each era—like trauma and oppression today—were adopted and utilized by therapists.”

But Miller says many people—clinicians included—overestimate therapy’s role and responsibilities. “It’s a little bit of hubris and narcissism that we continue to talk about psychotherapy as if it’s this hugely potent thing,” he says. “That’s not to downplay the impact it can have on people’s lives. But to assume it’s the cause of all these problems is not only laughable, but dangerous. It puts us at the center of the universe, and we’re not.”

Are celebrity therapists part of the problem? “I see humility every day in clinical practice,” Miller says. “But I see no humility in our thought leaders. The big talking points are all about how great we are, and how we’ve finally discovered the essence of true helping. I think it’s holding us back.”

Beyond Four Walls

It’s said that history repeats itself. And sure enough, the cultural criticism of therapy feels like familiar territory. In his 1992 book We’ve Had a Hundred Years of Psychotherapy—and the World’s Getting Worse, psychologist James Hillman leveled critiques oddly similar to what we’re hearing today: “People are getting more and more sensitive,” he wrote. “We’re disempowering ourselves through therapy.” Treatment, he continued, had become “sedation: benumbing, an aesthesia” designed to suppress pain and worry instead of helping clients learn to grapple with it.

As long as therapists are in the public eye, Doherty believes therapy will always experience some sort of blowback. “I think it’s inevitable that mental health professionals will influence the culture through our work,” he says. “And I’m okay with celebrity therapists. It’s a big mistake to think we should only operate within the walls of the therapy room. That’s missing the idea that we’re also citizens of a larger community.”

But how are therapists supposed to manage the public’s great expectations, especially when so many people are suffering and clinicians have the knowledge and tools to help?

“It’s a challenge,” Doherty says. “There are people who might want to see you because you’re a celebrity, or the director of a big therapy program or city clinic, not necessarily because you’re the best therapist for them. I’ve known celebrity therapists who stopped practicing because clients were expecting quick fixes or bowing down in front of them, and it was impacting the therapy. But you have to manage that just like anything else. It doesn’t mean you can’t do good, ethical work: you just need to be aware of the dynamics and take responsibility for your influence.”

Magic, with a Grain of Salt

Perel is no stranger to the responsibility—and controversy—that comes with fame. Over the years, she’s been described as “a provocateur” (Elle magazine), accused of “trivializing the scourge of infidelity,” and “inspiring wariness and even hostility among some of her colleagues” (The New Yorker). But listening to her onstage, it becomes clear why she’s managed to emerge largely unscathed. Perel may be all the things—likeable, smart, stylish, and eloquent—but she’s also incredibly self-aware, self-effacing, and humble.

As the night winds down, she agrees to take questions from the audience. Dozens of people line up behind strategically placed microphone stands, many with questions about their own relationships, and visibly nervous. Perel doesn’t accept many new clients nowadays, so for these lucky few, this is a rare, valuable moment. There’s the feeling that whatever bite-sized, uber-quotable morsel of knowledge Perel will offer can be tucked in your back pocket forever, that it won’t just fix whatever problem you’re dealing with, but feed your relationship for a lifetime.

Yes, Perel gives these people answers—good answers—but she also does exactly what Miller and Doherty say a good therapist should do: she doesn’t overpromise. She couches her responses in the fact that she, like the rest of us, is only human.

“People come to me and say, ‘How do I know if I’ve found the one?’” Perel says. “My answer is, ‘How the fuck should I know?!’” The audience laughs. “I cannot give you a clear map to a destination,” she tells us. “All I can offer you is the scenic route paved with bumps. I don’t have tips, but I do have invitations.” Later, another moment of humility: “Do not confuse longevity with success,” she says. “I sound confident, but I am sure of nothing.”

One woman in the audience asks Perel what advice she’d give a new clinician. “You can’t be good for everybody, and the fit matters a great deal. How good are you at what you’re doing apart from the modality? This or that model doesn’t matter. I used to lose sleep for three weeks when I made a mistake. Now I’m very good: it’s three days.” The audience laughs.

In July, Perel posted a short interview on her Instagram page, in which she was asked about her journey from therapist to thought leader. “I sat in the office for 34 years,” she says. “I didn’t set out to become a thought leader…. I feel that the role was bestowed upon me, that it’s people who chose me as one of their teachers in this moment where there’s so much confusion and chaos around relationships.”

Before Perel departs, she leaves us with one last nugget of wisdom, and it’s perhaps the most valuable of the night. “I tell my clients a good session isn’t just what happens in my office,” she says. “It’s what happens when you leave. And the same applies here.” Perel may have given us much to ponder, but what we do with that knowledge is up to us. She’s put the power in our hands. And that’s an incredible gift.

Will therapists continue to surf the celebrity wave? And if so, how long will the ride last? Surrounded by Perel’s starstruck fans, I entertain the thought of a future where therapists walk at the front of ticker-tape parades, where they grace movie screens and stand on podiums with medals around their necks. Who knows? Maybe one day we’ll have a therapist in the Oval Office.

I can’t predict the future, but one thing’s for certain: I wouldn’t be where I am today without a certain celebrity therapist in my own life. Bruce, who I first started seeing in elementary school, used to close every session with a silly, spirited farewell: “As they say in my native Timbuktu, Good day, sir!” he’d exclaim with an outstretched hand. It wasn’t always Timbuktu—sometimes it was Bangkok or Baghdad or Casablanca—but it always made me smile, even on sad days.

Years after parting ways, we met for an emergency session after a devastating college breakup. As I wiped away tears, he promised me that one day I’d meet the woman who’d be my future wife, that one day we’d find ourselves in the middle of a crowded restaurant, slow-dancing to our favorite song. I just shook my head in disbelief. “I’m telling you, man,” he said. “It’s gonna happen.”

That was 16 years ago, our last session. If I could talk to Bruce today, I’d tell him he was right. Some of the best celebrity therapists, I know, don’t stand on a stage. They’re not on talk shows, bestseller lists, or magazine covers. Besides their clients, nobody knows how skilled they are, nor likely ever will. But to the people they’ve helped, they will always be stars.

Once Perel has finished, the applause is thunderous. She takes a graceful bow and exits, and my wife and I stand up from our tiny, cramped seats and stretch. I put my hand in hers, take a deep breath, and we both smile. We have so much to talk about.

ILLUSTRATION © ZETHX