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. 
He had tried to hang himself, and had managed to break some veins, maybe fracture a little cartilage, by the time his wife discovered him. It had been touch and go, I suppose, and a long time in the intensive care unit, but he had truly cheated death.
This 55-year old highly-credentialed university professor didn’t look the part of a depraved rapist — little or no hair, red-faced, bashful, perhaps — but that very accusation caused him such despair that he tried to take his own life.
A student had accused him of this horrible “impropriety.“
Obviously, these charges of sexual misconduct shamed him severely. He maintained that the charge had been trumped up. The woman who had accused him had indeed some kind of a psychiatric history.
It is not uncommon for women to make this sort of accusation.
He told me he did not want to hate women. He also told me that he had a female judge.
I cannot help but think of the E.M. Forster novel “A Passage to India” which draws as accurate a psychological picture as anyone could of the sort of young woman who could make such an accusation.
Strangely enough, I could find essentially nothing about this as part of the psychological literature. I did find a lawyer who had started a blog online, and said that this was a very large and essentially ignored problem. Read more on False Rape Accusations — Who’s The Victim?…
Filed under Uncategorized by on Jan 25th, 2011. Comment.
He was pleasant, in his fifties, graying at the temples, articulate,and pretty much burned out on the symptoms of an alleged schizo-affective disorder. Like many of the people I treat he had been involved with the Hollywood entertainment establishment years previously. Now he lived in a residence suitable for his situation, and told me there was nobody he could talk to; he hated it. He even produced a lovingly-constructed list of names of people who had been important to him in the past. He did not know where they were, had no intention of finding them, so it served no ostensible purpose, except maybe to help him live in the past, because he had no interest in his dull and frustrating present. He said he simply could not relate to anyone in the residence where he was. They had no words, in many cases were illiterate, and were of no interest to him because they would not converse. He said he was depressed, but it was clear this was not the kind of depression you medicate.
I called for his case manager, who told me he had been offered another placement where it was expected there would be more conversation; not once, but twice. He had declined. The complaints I heard from him had been going on for years. I asked him what was going on. He told me, again quite articulate.
“I can’t decide. I’m like someone who stays in a marriage, even if they don’t love the other person. They just can’t change. I have tried, and I don’t think I can. Maybe people like you should leave me alone and stop trying to help me. I don’t think even a smart lady like you can do a good job of treating somebody who can’t make decisions.” Read more on Decisions, Decisions!…
Filed under Uncategorized by on Jun 8th, 2010. Comment.