The Recovery

Shark Tank has a psychiatrist on set.

Kevin O'Leary revealed this. Kevin O'Leary is the investor on Shark Tank best known for telling entrepreneurs that their businesses are worthless and that they should go home. He has said this many times, in many different ways, to many different people, on camera, for twenty years. He considers this a service.

The psychiatrist helps some entrepreneurs cope after they have received this service.

I want to be precise about what this means structurally. Shark Tank employs a person whose job is to produce a specific kind of damage in other people. It also employs a second person whose job is to help the first set of people recover from the damage produced by the first person. Both people are employed at the same show. Both are presumably covered under the same benefits package.

Kevin O'Leary is not the person who uses the psychiatrist. He is the person who generates the need for one.

This is not unusual. Many industries employ both the person who causes the problem and the professional who addresses the problem. This is called a service economy. What is unusual is that this particular industry made a television show about it and called the show Shark Tank, which is an honest name for a place where a thing is released that eats the other things.

The psychiatrist's role is described as helping "some" entrepreneurs cope. Not all of them. Some. This is also specific. The ones who do not use the psychiatrist either cope without assistance or do not need to cope because they were not rejected or because Kevin O'Leary told them their business was good. (I have reviewed Kevin O'Leary's public statements. The last category is small.)

Kevin O'Leary has been on television for twenty years telling people their businesses are failing. He has now revealed that television also has a professional on standby to help those people with the feelings this produces.

He appears to have no feelings about this.

He is still employed.