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. 
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.
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…
The current litany is “The economy is bad and I need more money just to get by.” Patients tell me they are about to get evicted or starve to death. I know nothing about benefits or their politics, except that governmental entities have no money either and this route is harder.
A lot of people seem to think that their lives would be better if they were plugged into a job that fit them as well as a plaster cast fits a fracture. But instead, they usually tell me there are no jobs at all. I try to slip in a little bit of useful advice, but obviously personal experience is limited. I don’t even have a really good answer for the patients who say “you have a job. Lucky you. You can’t understand what I am going through.”
There are patients who amaze me with their resourcefulness. Mostly, the manics or hypomanics; depressed people seem more likely to get “stuck.” Read more on Brainpower Helps In Hard Times…
Filed under Brain, depression, politics by on Nov 2nd, 2010. Comment.
“Argumentum ad hominem’ is what we called this back in the days when I was on the debating team in prep school. I was interested because it was supposed to be something that the more academic kids like me did instead of sports — where I consistently had shown prize-winning ineptitude for many years.
Besides, it was something you could do with (?against?) boys prep schools. Even in choral singing, the lowest of the altos were the only ones who actually got to stand next to boys. Here, on the debating team, there was at least an equal number of boys and girls, and everyone got to talk to a real live boy. Read more on Name-Calling Attacks…
Filed under politics by on Oct 22nd, 2010. Comment.
A few weeks ago I was flipping the channels on TV and discovered something disturbing. In fact, I think it took me this long to cool down before I could write about it. Apparently, I discovered “Pulpit Freedom Sunday” quite accidentally. I’ve heard that if a preacher in the pulpit talks about politics, his or her church can lose its tax-exempt status. This always seemed to me to be a way to separate church and state.
Considering that most of the Founding Fathers, as is well documented elsewhere, were mostly Deists or Unitarians and some were on a road barrelling toward atheism, as well as the large number of people who came to the colonies for religious freedom, this has always made cosmic sense. Apparently, people were given free rein to talk about politics in the pulpit from 1788 (ratification of the U.S. Constitution) until the Johnson Amendment in 1954, which a bunch of Christian lawyers feel is unconstitutional, because it is an abridgment of Freedom of Speech. Read more on Religion And Politics Shouldn’t Mix…
Filed under politics, Religion by on Oct 19th, 2010. Comment.
I won’t even begin to start a list of the towns and cities, as it would take me too long to just remember them — much less write them down.
And with each place I’ve lived, I eventually start thinking that it is the most corrupt place I’ve ever seen — until I move to the next place.
It’s not news any more, really. From the White House through the Legislature and the state governors down to the mayors and city council and even the dog catchers (do places really have elections for dog catchers?) power corrupts and money flows to the corrupt politician. Read more on Political Ugliness and More About That Mosque…
Filed under politics, Religion by on Sep 6th, 2010. Comment.
There seems to be a massive controversy about building a mosque near the site of the destroyed World Trade Center in New York City. This is bothering people so much that somebody has asked the president to say something.
Well of course the man said something. And of course his words were “measured.” People seem to have forgotten that the country was founded on religious freedom. This bit about the Founding Fathers (and mothers — yes they did as much as they could) intending the USA being only for Christians is pretty much rubbish.
Was George Washington a Christian? Thomas Jefferson wrote in his private journal, Feb. 1800 — “Gouverneur Morris had often told me that General Washington believed no more of that system (Christianity) than did he himself.” Read more on Politics, Religion and Sports: Forbidden Topics…
Filed under politics, Religion by on Aug 23rd, 2010. Comment.
He was not a day over 35; actually, he looked younger to me; almost childlike. He rattled off everything they had brainwashed him with in the military. Yes, brainwashed. Do you actually think young men would go into combat if they were not convinced it is fun and glorious? Really, I do not think we have come all that far from the Romans who would say sometime early in their service “dulce et decorum est pro patria mori” (“It is sweet and beautiful to die for one’s country”) The hard part comes after the combat. Maybe some painful wounds, treated by an overextended medical system, but the memorized ideology remains. The young and impressionable repeat what they have been told so often that they believe it.
“The military teaches self-discipline. It is a fine preparation for the working world.” Wrong. It teaches following orders, stamping out individual ideas and initiatives like so many cockroaches who have dared to enter the kitchen. They could appreciate if you find a faster way to process internal paperwork. They neither encourage nor reward the kind of initiative that makes entrepreneurs, a pretty good way to rise like cream. Read more on So You Expect A Job?…
Filed under News by on Jul 15th, 2010. Comment.
People told me I would have troubles in France because it was a “Catholic” country. I do not think any trouble I can remember came from the few people who actually attended church regularly. But back to politics. The parties were grouped into “left,” “right,” and “center.” The left included the commies, whom I had to reassure that even though I was an American I did not hate them. I found “rightists” fearing change as obsessively as any conservative (read “ultra-republican” American ever could. Read more on Psychology of Politics (and Politicians)…
Filed under Addictions, politics by on May 19th, 2010. Comment.