Owens needs couch time, therapist says

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. — I'm tired, and so are you, of reading that Terrell Owens is a jerk. As if we didn't all know that before he was suspended by the Philadelphia Eagles.

What we haven't heard enough of is WHY he's a jerk and why, to use a popular idiom of the day, he just doesn't get it about his behavior.

For the answer, we're turning today to Dr. Ann Lassalle of Washington, D.C., who for 20 years has worked with a wide variety of miscreants, including more than 30 professional athletes, and the first thing she wanted to imprint about Owens is that he's no dummy.

"I can't do an IQ measurement over the airways," she said. "But I've watched him on television and I think he's very intelligent.

"However, he has very poor impulse control. That's obvious. He also seems to have a kind of overblown sense of his own centrality, as if he would play every position on the field if he could.

"He blames other players for not playing well. If he loses, he blames the coach for calling bad plays."

But why, if he's as cerebral as we think he is, does he continue to act like a jerk when it has been made clear to him on numerous occasions that he's only alienating himself from his teammates?

"Why does he do it? Because he hasn't learned not to. What I see is an athlete who is not being helped. Clearly, up to this point, he has never had to control his behavior.

"I don't know his personal history, but I get the sense that we have here a gifted athlete who was probably given a lot of leeway throughout his career and whose really negative behavior has been simply tolerated.

"That's true for a lot of professional athletes, but for some reason his own particular temperament has blended with what he's been allowed to do. Warnings haven't gotten through to him."

Like many of us, Dr. Lassalle watched on television as Owens for the second time since he attacked the Philadelphia Eagles organization and quarterback Donovan McNabb tried to apologize.

"I saw someone who was genuinely sorry," she said. "But of course I've seen people abuse their spouses and be genuinely sorry. But then, they'll act on their impulses again. I've never worked with an abusive spouse who doesn't want to know how to control his behavior, and I think there's a good chance Terrell Owens wants to control his, too. But he has to have help.