Perusing the internet, I am overwhelmed with people doing “weird” things. But how do we define what is weird, when it is weird, and why it is weird?
I remember seeing the movie Fiddler on the Roof when I was quite young. I shuddered when I heard the song “Tradition,” because it was evident, even then, that descriptions of the way people should or should not be caused a whole lot of pain. The particular tradition that drove poor Tevye to hell and back was getting three daughters married off and being Jewish, which required dowries and Jewish grooms.
My parents attempted to receive my husband — who at that time called himself “the goy next door” and was willing to wear a yamelke and articulate a few words of yiddish he had learned from Mad Magazine. But you could tell that this was a problem for them. An eventuality I found just excellent in my life and which I credit with an uncommon level of happiness. I can say now that my marriage is happier than theirs ever was, at least from all that I saw. Part of this comes from my willingness to ignore a tradition they took as dogma. Read more on The Rights of Individuals to Punish Each Other…
Filed under Family by on Dec 15th, 2012. Comment. 
Topic: Research Fraud
For someone who has been a part of many clinical trials, I will be the first to admit that I have very little training in research design or statistics. Oh, the hours I’ve spent surreptitiously curled up on the sofa of a doctors’ lounge or my own apartment, thinking that somebody paid somebody a lot of money to write “science” so I could figure out how and why I would know things. It pretty much worked. There were a few mentions of statistics at my delightfully thorough prep school, but there was not so much as a word at medical school. The research types were always hanging around medical school settings — their brains rented and services bought by the medical side of things — as they did not make much money. We did receive some wonderful instruction from clinicians as to how to evaluate research literature and decide how to apply it to our practices.
I have a vivid memory of an endearing shy and spindly instructor during a course required for incipient biologists at Boston University. He had Jewish afro hair, coke bottle bottom glasses, and a more than passing resemblance to a young Woody Allen. Oh, how he despaired that we were mostly going to be money-chain doctors as opposed to truth-chasing scientists. I remember that once, and only once, did he reach fiery intensity in that class. “Nothing will be published unless the probability that it actually shows what it is supposed to show is greater than 19 out of 20, that means p>.05. But nobody wants to admit what that really means.” Oh, how silent we were, on the edge of our chairs. Read more on Research Fraud Isn’t Reported To The Public…
Filed under Government, Research by on Nov 14th, 2012. Comment.
I get blazing mad whenever one of those knee-jerk “patriots” cry, “You don’t support our troops!” if anyone should criticize the military, our government’s foreign policy or any specific wars, invasions or other actions we’ve taken in this brave new millennium.
I was in the peacetime United States Army. Since my honorable discharge, I’ve served several Veteran’s Administration medical facilities in several states, and in private practice, I’ve made a special study of the treatment of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder – which the military routinely denies even exists and doesn’t even try to treat in many VA facilities.
Yes, I was in the Army, and No – I wasn’t in combat. Nevertheless, with the idea of war always hanging over my shoulder, my life was different. I never really understood the “grunts” — the infantry without appreciable rank — who wanted nothing more than to see “action.” Read more on Can’t We All Just Get Along?…
Filed under Uncategorized by on Oct 12th, 2011. Comment.
The first thing you get when you “in-process” into the Army — at least the first thing I got — was dog tags. I had to decide if I wanted my religion on my dog tags, and tell the lady at the typewriter what kind of funeral I wanted. For all my ups and downs, I decided I would die Jewish, and get a traditional funeral, and make the Army find a rabbi. I could put that on them with no thought of guilt. I had the option of putting my faith on my dog tags. I was warned, in the most dispassionate possible way, that some enemies of the United States of America would kill me if it said “Jewish.” I chose a resolution some co-religionaries had chosen in World War II. I chose “Hebrew,” feeling more in common with the ancient faith than with the heavily politicized modern tripartite (Orthodox, Conservative and Reformed) ways of filling congregations.
Then I got my “Geneva Convention” card — Lavender and black and white, it said in 22 languages, roughly the equivalent “Don’t kill me. I’m a doctor.”
Filed under Doctors, Education, News by on Sep 9th, 2011. Comment.
I am old enough to remember having briefly met then-senator from Massachusetts, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, at a synagogue breakfast in my hometown – a suburb of Boston. He had donned a skull cap, and shook hands with my parents as well as with me. I talked little in those days, which is a testament to how young I was. I could stand unaided, and the senator shook hands with me.
Bill Clinton courts the Jewish vote
Years later, his was one of the first presidential elections I tried to follow. People were very worried that he was Catholic. In our neighborhood, anybody I knew who was not Jewish seemed to be Catholic. It had never bothered me. I remember seeing on television some news-reporting-human asked him about his need to be obedient on the Pope, being a Catholic and all, and how that could limit his ability to serve. He gave what I thought then was a good answer, about not being obliged to do anything the Pope happened to say, but saying his service to the people of the United States came first. I had thought that a good answer at the time.
My parents had all kinds of concerns, as did many Jews of their generation, even though they habitually voted Democrat. Read more on Whose Beliefs Do You Follow? Your Own!…
Filed under Religion by on May 12th, 2011. Comment.
It is horrible and terrible and should not have happened, but it did. We have to look at questions we have looked at before. We claim — all of us at one time or another — that human life is precious, and that its very existence is beyond price, and the quality of such existence is pristinely precious, and then everybody in America has to process this tragedy.
First, let’s take care of the straight medical questions. Congresswoman Giffords is obviously getting the best possible care and the most modern possible care. People have learned a whole lot about injuries to the brain since yours truly hung out in a semi-rural University Medical Center in Northern France. (I cannot believe it was over two decades ago).
The people taking care of her have told USA Today the basics, so I can only recapitulate.The shot was made at point blank range, estimated by some as 3 or 4 feet. The bullet entered the back of her head on the left side, and exited through the front. It is true that the structures controlling heartbeat, breathing, and basic survival are more toward the middle of the brain, or “brain stem.” Things like using the senses to put together images of what a human is dealing with are a bit more superficial. Read more on Left, Right, Jewish, Christian — Arizona Shooting Victims Are More Than Political/Religious Pawns…
Filed under politics by on Jan 11th, 2011. Comment.
Well, it’s about time the military took its head out of the sand regarding homosexuals in the ranks. I could never see the reasoning behind someone considering gays inappropriate for the military. The opposition had been saying things like this would “undermine order and discipline and unit cohesiveness.” Of course, I cannot find a single article or source to support these fanciful statements. People abandon reason when it comes to finding ways to endorse previously existing prejudices. The military — in the U.S. at least — has been a haven for discrimination. I dare anyone to tell me it isn’t. It has been 25 years since I served my hitch, and during that time, I heard enough of people feeling hurt and abused by statements perceived as racial slurs, as well as actions that ranged from hostile to physically violent. Sometimes these affronts came from peers, but more often from people of higher rank.
Yes, as a woman, a Jew and a psychiatrist, I had my share of harassment. It was bad enough coming from among the ranks but I even heard an unforgettable anti-female slur from my Jewish chaplain — a real live ordained rabbi in uniform who had had a camouflage yamulke and liked to jump from airplanes. When I told him I was heavily trained in Jewish liturgy and wanted to contribute to the ritual any way I could — including teaching others — he told me that there plenty enough men to fill ritual needs and so it was not necessary for him to do anything with a woman. The military was to me a place where civil rights were stripped from you. The idea of the military taking time to comply with this new ruling — well, the bigger and the more unwieldy the bureaucracy, the longer it takes to do things. But when it bucks longstanding, pre-existing prejudices, it can only take longer. Read more on Don’t Ask Don’t Tell: Will The Military Adapt?…
Filed under News, politics by on Dec 20th, 2010. Comment.
We have chosen collectively, as a society, to use the year-end holidays to mark the passage of our years. This means that both memories and emotions seem to pour out of the heavens and clobber us all. None of us has had, to my knowledge, a Thanksgiving that looked anything like the Norman Rockwell painting of everyone sitting at the table being fed by a loving grandmother — a reality that has been soundly parodied.
Despite efforts at legislating “political correctness”, there are plenty of people who are not Christian suffering through Christmas — especially those with children who watch television and assimilate its methods. When I was very young and going to a Jewish religious school, the intensity of the group identity made it easy, even though there were several group activities my parents did not let me participate in. They were mostly the Sabbath-oriented ones, as we drove in cars and turned on lights and did other things the very Orthodox, who ran the place, did not do. It was clear even to a very young psyche, that Chanukah was a warm and light-filled time, with special games and special treats and special songs and special joys. Read more on Christmas For Religious Minorities…
There was only one patient in the waiting room. “Shalom, Dr. Goldstein,” was what I heard. I answered in the only possible way. “Shalom.” It means “peace” in Hebrew, and is a traditional greeting.
She was excited to have a doctor with a name like “Goldstein” who might actually be Jewish. She was a Jew from the east coast who had landed in the semi-rural place where I found myself; no synagogue, no Jewish community, “only a couple of Messianics.” These are Jews who consider themselves “completed” having “added” Christ on to their belief system. I am not, and won’t be, one of them. This woman wanted a “Jewish word” so badly that she took my hand. She also wanted at least three prescriptions, one of which would be for Xanax (alprazolam), the most addictive of the benzodiazepines. She had run out several weeks ago. No wonder she looked so nervous. I told her I used to be a cantorial soloist — someone filling the role of a cantor (which is a formal title of the temple choir leader, the singer of liturgical solos and who also leads the congregation in prayer). So, yeah, I really was Jewish. Read more on Shalom In The Waiting Room…
Filed under Religion by on Sep 27th, 2010. Comment.
During residency training in psychiatry, when I was learning how to do psychotherapy, I learned that the lady at the front desk ran the clinic. She did the “statistics.”
I thought she was hyper, but she told me she subsisted on coffee and crashed on the weekends. She actually told me so much personal information, I suggested she become a patient at the resident clinic. She said there was a rule against it. I told her to go to another clinic, but she told me she could not get time off, something I never quite believed. But she told me, also, that she understood what was going on with me. This was news to me, except that I knew I was struggling to be a good psychotherapist.
The stories of everybody’s lives that they told me were so terrible I thought I might just go home and cry every night. I did a little at first, but I got over it. Then, she told me my “statistics.” It seemed that more of my patients came back for more visits than anyone else’s. They liked me. Read more on You Don’t Have To Be A Jewish Mother To Have Empathy…
Filed under Family by on May 3rd, 2010. Comment.