Now you know that this interview is a kind of wish fulfillment for anyone who's ever been in therapy because I get to ask you questions and

find out all about what you're up to.

Yes indeed.

Do you recognize that?

I just want to make that clear.

Okay, great. Yeah.

This is Radio Atlantic. I'm Hunter Rosen and that is Dr. Richard Friedman.

And what do you do? I'm a psychiatrist.

Friedman runs the psycho pharmacology clinic at Cornell.

He's been a psychiatrist for more than 35 years.

But in a recent story for the Atlantic,

he made a shocking and terrifying proposition

that lots of people could quit therapy right now.

As it happens, I'd had that thought myself recently.

I could quit therapy.

Uh-huh. Yeah. And how long had you been afflicted by that thought? I'm just kidding.

It was, you know, it came to me a little while and I will tell you at the end what I decided to do and what my thinking was but I was so delighted that an actual professional was addressing this question that I just popped up in my head.

So essentially the question... that I just popped up in my head.

So essentially the question that you're thinking about,

or how I frame the question that you're thinking about

is, should we think of going to therapy like physical therapy like something you do for a while when you need to address an issue or like going to the gym like something you should always do because it's part of just staying healthy.

Yes.

...