You do not want to work with Cristina Barone. Wanting the doctor herself is another matter entirely: Men of all sorts make passes at Cristina, a 28-year-old clinical psychologist. But few of us would want her job--evaluating and counseling criminals in a Los Angeles jail.
In The Silence of the Lambs Jodie Foster plays an FBI trainee who is trying to psych out Hannibal Lecter. Cristina does it for real. To help judges decide which inmates are mentally fit to stand trial, Cristina must enter the minds of criminal suspects. It's dangerous territory. Some write letters to the pretty therapist, or ask her out on dates--after they are released, of course. In her first months on the job Cristina learned that bad men are often narcissistic. They'll talk about their sexual prowess, their conquests, trying to intimidate her. But she can handle it. "It gives me something to work with," she says. "Even antisocial talk is better than indifference, which gives you nothing to work with." But then who could be indifferent to her? Raised in Yokohama by her Japanese mother and U.S. Marine father, Cristina excelled in sports as a schoolgirl, then turned to hitting the books. After graduating from California State University--Dominguez Hills, she earned a doctorate in psychology and landed her current post. "That's when I decided I had focused on academics long enough. It was time to develop my external self." Working with a personal trainer, she honed her body to a standard that matches her intellect. Then, typically, she challenged herself. "Everybody grows up with Playboy. Now I wanted to be in it." What Cristina calls "my latest adventure" led her to us. Here's hoping Playboy readers react better than most of the men she dates. "They say I'm too analytical. OK, I admit that I need intellectual stimulation. Is that too much to ask?" Surely it isn't. For while her talk of behaviorism, narcissism and sociopathy may sound like professional jargon, Cristina's true genius is actually quite simple: She may be the only shrink whose looks can drive you sane.
