THE SESSIONS: Interviews with WH Macy and Dr. Cheryl Cohen Greene

It's about this guy Mark O'Brien

who wanted to, he grew up in an Iron Lung

he was paralyzed from the neck down,

he wanted to know what a woman was.

He wanted to know what intimacy...

what sex was all about.

So, he hired a surrogate.

So, I think we could say

...has some intimacy.

Yeah, his therapist called me

...and similar to what happened in the movie,

and told me what his desire was.

And that was to not to be a virgin.

These guys...

I don't know how they did it.

I've never seen someone so un-self-conscious

about being buck naked in front of the camera.

I've been there.

I've done it.

It's not easy to do.

We always work as a team.

I call the therapist after every session.

The client knows that I'm sharing

what he says and what we do

so we can make the whole process for him

as beneficial as possible.

Because things do come up when you're working with

a client.

Not just his erection, hopefully that happens, but

you know, over time, but it involves a lot of emotional

feeling.

It's not mechanical.

I have to feel something for a client.

I have to like the person.

I feel that most of my clients come to me

and they're very brave.

When I spoke to him on the phone,

he told me he felt like he was on the outside

of a restaurant looking in through a big window

and everybody on the other side sitting and enjoying

a fabulous feast that he would never be able to

partake in.

And I thought to myself,

...and I said to him...

You deserve a seat at that table.

The surrogate Helen Hunt

was asking her... Mark O'Brien,

while she was playing Cheryl Cohen Greene

at the time

how he felt

cause he had said to me in real life

he felt guilty for a lot of things

and one of them was that he

had sexual thoughts.

I mean he was only 6 years old.

He felt that somehow God had

punished him.

And one of the reasons that he was punished

is because he masturbated

or he tried to masturbate when he was a child.

Or a young adult.

He explored himself in the Iron Lung.

He thought he could reach his penis, and he couldn't.

But he had sexual thoughts.

He was not able to masturbate.

But he had sexual thoughts.

He also had a sister who died when she was

I think 10, 8, or 9, or 10... I'm not...

I don't remember clearly, but she died

because his parents were paying so much attention

to him and his needs.

And he felt very guilty about that.

So, there was the question of whether, you know...

he thought that God was punishing him

for... something.

And that was what she was addressing.

People knew from his writings how he had felt.

So, Ben incorporated it into the screenplay...the script.

When I'm with clients, I ask them questions.

I listen a lot.

Most of it is listening.

and when they mention things that I think

well, I mention... I tell the therapist everything

after each session.

So, we can see what, where we need to,... they

the therapist and the client

need to go to work on some issues.

Most of the time, the therapist has

worked on a lot of things with the client

before they're referred to me

but it's always, you know, you make that kind of connection

with a person, being intimate with them.

More things will come up.