She's a three time Emmy Award winner, best selling author and you've seen her on all of the talk shows. Dr. Carole Lieberman is world famous as the "Media Psychiatrist" with a star star studded Beverly Hills practice and is highly respected among her peers. Her latest book "Bad Girls: Why Men Love Them & How Good Girls Can Learn Their Secrets" is a huge success and it has led Dr. Carole on a fantastic journey to London in hopes of obtaining a very unique piece of memorabilia! I recently enjoyed speaking with Dr. Carole from her Beverly Hills home.....
MICK: Please tell me how and why you went to London to bid on Kate Middleton's sexy see-through dress?
DR. CAROLE: Kate Middleton had got engaged to Prince William right around the same time my book " Bad Girls: Why Men Love Them and How Good Girls Can Learn Their Secrets" came out in November. I've been doing a lot of media interviews and I would talk about how Kate was the quintessential good girl who used bad girl secrets to catch her prince! I gave some examples and one of these secrets was wearing this sexy see-through dress at the fashion show that she knew Prince William was going to be at. They were both at the same school. That dress was actually supposed to be a skirt and she wore it over her underwear. It was a combination of being really beautiful, having a good body and sauntering down the runway. It wasn't that she was just beautiful and had a good body, it was she had the audacity to wear this in a Scottish school parading in her underwear essentially. It was this confidence and audacity that attracted Prince William. It got him to turn to his friend and say "Wow, she is hot!". At that moment, it went from being, in his eyes, a friend to being a love interest. She was this great example that showed women that they can catch their own prince. In my book, the last chapter is "Bad girls secrets to a man's heart". That is a distillation of stories from the rest of the book. I interviewed over 100 men and put the best bad girl stories in the book. In between the chapters in the book, there's the twelve chapters about each type of bad girl. Within each chapter, I have 3 or 4 real stories from men on the dating front talking about their experiences with that particular bad girl. When men read it, they are warned about the kind of things the bad girls do to catch them or trap them. Good girls can read it from a different point of view where they can see the secrets the bad girls use to catch these men. The last chapter is a distillation of the things that kept coming up again and again in these stories. So Kate Middleton is essentially a good girl who used bad girl secrets. Pippa Middleton is a bad girl! Kate represented, and by extension of her sexy dress, how good girls can catch their own prince! That's why I went to London to bid on the dress because I wanted it as a tangible proof that good girls can catch their own prince. I was outbid because there was no way I going to pay $125,000 for the dress. I did bid on it. Before I went to London, it was estimated that the high bid would be $16,000. I thought that was within reason. Of course, things change!
That was the last item up for bid. I was committed to bid on it. By the time I started to bid on it, the bidding was up to 28,500 lbs., which is like $65,000! After coming all that way, I did place a bid! After that, it went through the roof. I realized that somebody would probably outbid me so I had a plan B. I would bid on items from the Duchess of Windsor because she was the quintessential bad girl who conduced her man to give up the throne. I wound up with three lace boudoir jackets and one shocking pink nightgown was a jacket. I had to fight tooth and nail to get those!
MICK: What was the theme of the auction?
DR. CAROLE: All together it was vintage high fashion clothing. There were about 300 items from various years, not all royalty items. There was clothing, jewelry, pocketbooks. The last items were 3 dresses from Princess Diana and the last thing was Kate's dress. It was quite exciting. Before I went to London, my publicist sent out press releases about my quest so there had been some things in the news before I went. There were tons of press both days. They all wanted to know why this woman from Los Angeles had come to London to bid on Kate's dress! The people there were really nice except for the person bidding against me! There were about 300 people at the auction with about 50 press people behind them to see would would win the coveted items. There was one person bidding against me for the Duchess's items and I was determined to win the auction after coming all the way to London! I would not go home empty handed! So now I have the Duchess's bad girl things!
This was all for the same reason that I wrote the book. In general, it was to help men and women get the love they deserve. For men, beware of bad girls. For good girls, it was to even the playing field so they would not lose their men to bad girls and that they can catch their own prince! So it's all tied in together!
MICK: Something for everyone!
DR. CAROLE: Yes that's right! I have this test for women in the first chapter of the book called "The Bad Girls Test" for women and "The Sitting Duck Test" for men. In the bad girl's test, you go from being a good girl to being a man eater depending on how many things you check off. For each type of bad girl, I explain what has made them that way. I also explain what makes men attracted to them. There are psychological roots for all of these things. It's not only for good girls or for bad girls who want to reform or recovering bad girls. What makes a bad girl bad is feeling that she's not lovable. It starts off with having a dysfunctional relationship with her father that makes her feel unlovable. She grows up and is attracted to bad boys who continue to make her feel unlovable. At some point, she takes her heart off her sleeve ,hardens it and decides to go after men for these other reasons and that's the 12 different types I describe in my book.
MICK: Do you the rights to Kate's dress?
DR. CAROLE: When I was in London, I became friends with Charlotte Todd, the designer of the dress. I asked her if she could make me a replica! I did this before I was outbid. So I did wind up with the only replica/prototype of the limited edition of manufactured copies of the dress. I became the U.S. ambassador of the dress! The only place you can get this dress in the United States is from my website. I'm looking to be placing it in certain boutiques. When I speak and do my "How To Catch a Prince Tour" lectures, the dress will be sold there.
MICK: How is the book doing?
DR. CAROLE: It's doing pretty well!
MICK: I also saw that one of the schools you attended with the University of Stony Brook here on Long Island. Did you live on Long Island?
DR. CAROLE: I lived at the dorms when I went to college there. I was born in the Bronx, grew up in Flushing and Forest Hills. When I went to Stony Brook, we lived in Forest Hills at the time.
MICK: You are one the the world's top forensic psychiatrists. How often are you called to court to testify?
DR. CAROLE: I usually have about 10 cases, in different stages, going on at the same time. A lot of cases will settle before they reach court. In one stage I'm reading the records and examining the parties involved in the law suits. Or I'm writing a report. Then there's the deposition and then there's the trial, if it gets that far. Most cases are in California but I've testified in a number of different states.
MICK: Who are your favorite celebrities?
DR. CAROLE: I usually get called on to analyze all the things the celebrities are doing wrong! In the book, for each of the types of bad girls, I name celebrity examples for each of the types. Whether they are real people like Angelina Jolie being a husband stealer or fictional characters. For example, I use the characters from "Sex In The City". I suppose I would have to say Kate Middleton as my favorite celebrity at this point!
MICK: What do you do to unwind?
DR. CAROLE: Besides writing, talking and trying to help people, my other passion is horseback riding. I have a horse. I started riding when I was in camp as a kid. I continued when I was in Stony Brook. There was a physical education class on horse riding and I took it for two semesters. I ride like three or four times a week and allow myself that luxury and even compete too!
MICK: Are you are superstitious person?
DR. CAROLE: Sometimes I am. For the Millennium, I went to the Amazon in Peru and on this trip, we communed with Shamans. That was like a fine line between superstition and spiritual stuff. One day recently, I was eating Chinese food and for the first time in my life, I got a fortune cookie that didn't have a fortune in it! I don't know if you would call that superstitious but it seemed rather foreboding! So I demanded the waiter to bring me another fortune cookie!
MICK: You've been called the Dr. Freud of modern times by your peers. How do you feel about that?
DR. CAROLE: I actually studied with Anna Freud in my last year of residency at NYU Bellevue. I was chief resident and so for my last year, I went to London for four months. I did research at the The Maudsley Hospital [a British psychiatric hospital in South London] but the main reason I went there was because I wanted to study with Anna Freud. That was an amazing experience. Reading Sigmund Freud's interpretations of dreams is what got me to become a psychiatrist. I had decided I wanted to be a doctor when I was around eight years old but when I was a teenager, I read Freud's interpretation of dreams and that really resonated with me. I respect him for his theories and the legacy and changes he left.
MICK: You've written best selling books on bad girls and bad boys (Bad Boys: Why We Love Them, How to Live with Them and When to Leave Them),. What's next?
DR. CAROLE: There was a book in between called "Coping With Terrorism" and that was published in London. In 2006, American publishers didn't believe that enough people would buy a book on coping with terrorism. Today, so many people are in denial and because Bin Laden has been killed, its helping people stay in denial. Terrorists are not to stop trying to destroy America. So two things are next for me. I want to bring bad boys back with a new edition so I can use more current bad boys as examples. I also want to have "Coping With Terrorism" published in America because I really feel passionate about that. We really haven't recovered from 9/11 and we aren't dealing well with the ongoing news we hear about terrorism.
We are putting our heads in the sand in denial and it's costing us psychologically. A good example is the obesity crisis. There are many factors for this but the main factor is that people are trying to comfort themselves with food because of being rattled from this ingoing threat and the aftermath of 9/11. We are not talking about it and we don't want to admit out loud that we are still scared. We are coping badly by drinking to much, eating to much and various malfunctions. We really have to learn how to cope better. So besides helping people find love, I'm helping people how to survive war!
For more on Dr. Carole Lieberman...http://www.drcarole.com/
http://www.badgirlsbook.com/
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