Jewish

0

People often want to know something about their psychiatrist.

There is this thing called “transference” where their past relationship history can certainly color what they think and feel. I have no big secrets to hide from my patients, so I can usually be direct and take only an insignificant amount of time on these issues. Usually it just takes one of my stabs at humor.

For those to whom religion is an important facet of life, I am often asked about my beliefs. I often end up saying things like, “I am very sorry I am Jewish and not the Christian you would have preferred, but do you think Christ could work through a crazy old Jewish lady like me who would work really hard to help you feel better?” A “yes” and a laugh and we get straight into the meat of things with that one. Read more on Liberal or Conservative — Different Brains or Different Opinions?…

0

I love being a ”shrink-lady.”  (okay, a “psychiatrist.”)

I did not pick it out of a hat.  I tried a couple of other medical specialties.  The “doctor” part — well, there was never any doubt about that part, really.  I mean the idea of taking care of other folks came into my head pretty early on, as did the idea that I was smarter than most other kids, ahead of where I was “supposed” to be.

My family had some health problems as I persevered in schooling.  It became evident that doctors had not only status but power over other people’s lives. Read more on Your life, Your Work – What’s The Difference?…

Filed under Asperger's, Family, News, Psychiatrists by on . Comment#

0

In 1932, my paternal Grandmother-Of-Blessed-Memory bought the house where my father and aunt – and eventually my brother and I — grew up.  Until her passing while I was in medical school, she was the undisputed queen of the castle.

As a stereo-typical Jewish Mother, she was in constant competition with my mother in the kitchen.  My mother always tried to act pleasantly, but between her father driving in from two hours to the west and arriving at 6 am on Sundays to tell her she was too fat, and my father’s mother besting her in the kitchen, she was generally miserable and had little ability to hide her misery from me.

My father did not show my mother any affection where I could see. Read more on The Power Of Silence…

Filed under Family, News by on . Comment#

0

I was traveling the United States looking for a graduate level training job in neurosurgery.  Women were not as accepted in medicine as they are now.  Personally, I think it is at least in part because medicine was still considered a serious profession.  Most of the places I interviewed had never hired a woman as a neurosurgery resident before.  They would ask me behind closed doors (with no witnesses) if I planned to have a family or practice part time and thus compromise the investment in time and money they planned to make in me.

Oy!

I had met Mother Rocky, the great Jewish matriarch of a hunk of St. Louis, on a flight to that august city, where I had lucked out by getting a free upgrade to first class.

She seemed to think I would have some interest in an arranged marriage. Read more on The Part of Being Female I Still Wrestle With…

Filed under News by on . Comment#

0

Even though I am both a woman and a psychiatrist, I am no expert on the mother-daughter relationship.

My Mother-Of-Blessed-Memory was a “good” woman by any measure — the faithful and virtuous homemaker.  She spent a lot of time thanklessly trying to nurture my Father-Of-Blessed-Memory — a pretty grandiose if creatively powerful music writing and arranging manic with some Asperger traits — and my Brother-Of-Blessed-Memory — a full blown Asperger’s who was also bipolar.

They took so much of her psychic energy it is a wonder she had any left at all for me.  But she did, and she told me how she had to fight to get me freedom, the days she would drop me off in the car when I went to the Secondary Science Training program, or even just to walk in downtown Boston. Read more on Mothers and Daughters and Such…

Filed under Family by on . Comment#

0

I was wearing my best pastel multicolor weave suit as I walked up the stairs of a drab gray Victorian mansion converted into a medical office on the outskirts of large mid-western city. It was a bit cool, early spring, and I had been through all of the other principal personalities in a fairly large and well respected neurosurgery department.  The emeritus chief of the department — older, semi-retired, wrote hunks of textbooks about 20 years before; was the last one I had to see.  Although nobody seemed wildly excited, I had “passed” the interviews to make it this far.

The Victorian mansion was the office building of the neurosurgical group that was the residency faculty.  I was ushered into a richly furnished Victorian style office with antimacassars and gigantic velvet wing-backed chairs.

The father-to-us-all type neurosurgeon spent over five minutes asking me about France and my passion for the brain before asking me if my period gave me any problems. Read more on Women In Science Sore And Soar…

Filed under Education, Government, medicine, News by on . Comment#

0

First, let us establish who Callista Gingrich is.  She is the current wife of Newt Gingrich, which news reporting at least suggests is a temporary employment. She is a former Washington intern who has created documentaries and media stuff with her husband.

He has a history of finding his next wife before finishing with the last, so if she were my buddy I would tell her that I hope she has a good prenup — or maybe she wants a postnup.

This being said, I agree with this woman on the thesis of this article — assuming she actually wrote it. Often, people in the public eye let someone else “do the paperwork” when they blog, write essays, etc. Ms. Newt says that today’s young kids have an appalling lack of knowledge about the basics of the history of this country, such as why the pilgrims came or who George Washington was. Read more on Knowledge Of History Means National Pride…

Filed under medicine, News, Science by on . Comment#

1

We are in an era when all reporting — wire services, networks, whatever — looks the way tabloid reporting did when I was small.  Aggressive, emotional, mostly verbal renderings of disasters that are meant to strike terror into the heart of the reader.  Sometimes, something miraculous or near miraculous.  Once in a while in this constellation of stories there is something “inspiring.” We all need inspiration.  It is tough to define and highly individualistic.

I actually like this definition more than others: That “feeling of enthusiasm” that makes you “do” or “create” something. Read more on We All Need Inspiration — Here Is Today’s Dose…

Filed under Doctors, Religion by on . 1 Comment#

0

Can you die from a tattoo?  You betcha.

I never looked very closely at the literature since getting tattoos on your body is against Jewish law.  I remember from Jewish Religious school when I was quite young, having it reamed into y poor little noggin along with a bunch of other stuff, that when God came for the resurrection of the flesh, not only was it a really good idea that you had a little bit of earth from the land of Israel in your pocket (in Boston, tiny sacks of such alleged origin were overpriced at best) but there had to be no, absolutely no, placed-there-on-purpose marks on your body.  It would be really bad because you wanted God to know you were the right (strictly Kosher) Jewish body.

Somehow, it seemed to be possible to get by with a scar.  I figured it was because if you had an accident, an omniscient God would know about it anyway. Read more on Death By Tattoo…

Filed under Disease, informed consent by on . Comment#

0

When a marijuana patient visits me for permission to use that drug, I have to ask them, gently, how long they have used it.  Most, if they are old enough, do not give me an answer that I can quantify.  Instead, they start with something like, “It seems like yesterday I used it for fun.  Now, I need it just to (fill in the blank).” Survive, live, walk, or keep from throwing up.  They wonder about how and when it changed from a form of recreation to a form of drug treatment.

They never seem to believe it has already been a drug, for thousands of years, in other cultures.  If I give them enough time, they count their own age and their own problems by how they use it.  With a few thousand papers published every year, mostly in other countries, it would be crazy at this point to try to believe it wasn’t a drug.  For an amazing number of folks, it seems to be the way they reckon the passage of their lives. Read more on The Passage of Time…

Filed under Alternative Medicine, Family, News, weight by on . Comment#