I have had some awfully difficult patients lately. Males, in their early twenties, who misbehave and ignore all known authorities including me, and often tell me they will not take any “stinking” pills no matter what, and tell me to go do obscene things to myself. (I am old enough to know how and when to do the latter without their instruction.)
I felt silly that they bothered me, since I have actually had some success working with some very hardened criminals who have murdered folks and done some pretty heinous things. As a matter of fact, such folks usually like me. I actually remember from my prison work one cell block I often visited in person, where I earned the nickname “Mary Poppins” — for it was hot and I wore a hat tied with a scarf to fight the sun and the desert wind.
Even after the hat and scarf were determined to be a breach of prison security (since they covered my face and represented a potential method of disguise and flight for the inmates) they still called me “Mary Poppins” and broke into “A Spoonful of Sugar” whenever I entered the cell block.
Granted the inmates had few amusements, but I still think they liked me.
Sometimes, even with all my Herculean mental efforts, my best insights come from my husband. Brilliant in aspects of his mind other than his excellent taste in women, he explained to me that the young toughs who came to my clinic and treated me so poorly were simply “pre-prison,” and had not yet dealt with the consequences of their actions. Brilliant, and I believe, correct.
As a former prison doctor, I was more inclined to read a recent story about the effort to reduce state prison populations by turning low-level offenders back to county facilities. But this is the kind of headline that suggests there is something going on that is not at all what the story is about.
Counties and state government in California are not really in an adversarial relationship. It is just that nothing works terribly well, which is no shock to anyone who has lived in California for a bit.
Rugged individualists in Northern California and Southern Oregon have wanted to form their own state of Jefferson for the past 70 years.
As far back as 1945 the folks in Northern California (along with Southern Oregon) wanted to secede because their agricultural interests made them feel
Filed under Prisons by on Mar 11th, 2014. Comment. 
Even a 6-year old can understand the futility of gun proliferation in halting crime. I especially admire his use of sarcasm at this age to get his point across.
Somebody was quoted as saying that gun buyback programs are like trying to empty the Pacific Ocean with a bucket. Yes, this is nuts, and stupid. Most of all, this is the showy crest of a wall of anti-intellectualism that threatens to down our previously mighty country.
People are very excited about gun buyback programs right now. Me, I never owned a gun. Although, some people have told me I should given the dangerous situations I too often turn up in. As I say this, I look down at a scar on the inner aspect of my left elbow. A scar I sustained when a drunk in a northern French emergency room attacked me with a piece of broken glass. It is, of course, paler and harder to find than when a young surgeon colleague came from home to close it with tiny little faerie-like stitches. No guns around, of course. I learned before that scar, early in my French training, that if you owned a gun — and especially if you didn’t feel very secure with it — it was likely to be turned about and used on you. Me. The owner. The “good guy.” Read more on The Cockeyed Logic of Gun Buybacks…
Filed under Government by on Jan 3rd, 2013. Comment.
A beloved football coach – I might even say a living legend – finds his life destroyed after a luminous career. All because of alleged inaction – perhaps to shield a friend, perhaps to preserve the “old school” or for other reasons.
More than a coach -- Joe Paterno has been a diety at Penn State
And the sad story of Joe Paterno is only one more chapter in how the victims who suffer are once again vilified, and how we wonder if it is even possible for justice to prevail when such tragedy is involved.
When I was in the year of training for psychotherapy, I felt fortunate to study under a knowledgeable PhD who ran the gamut from psychoanalysis to cognitive styles in his competencies.
The thing he told us was the most important thing to do during our psychotherapy training was for each of us to isolate the population with which we could not work. Read more on Penn State Sports Scandal Destroys Lives…
Filed under Sexual Misconduct by on Nov 10th, 2011. Comment.
Sometimes my mother would act strangely.
I remember when she told me that she remembered when my tiny behind could fit entirely into her hand, and that for that reason she did not have to listen to anything I said. I did not follow the logic, but since I certainly could not remember when my behind was that small, she had me.
It seems that wherever I go, whatever clinical situation I have found myself in, my female colleagues on the staff eventually start talking about mothers and daughters.
The following statistic is not from valid research mind you – just from casual observation – but every mother wants to have a daughter just like her.This does not happen, as I patiently explained to my mother, because of the DNA getting all jumbled up through something called genetic recombination. I would probably have a daughter who was as charming as Great Aunt Gussie, the woman who had stolen the family inheritance and had not been known to be particularly polite in polite society either.
Probably the most famous outlaw gang in history -- Butch Cassidy and The Sundance Kid
The fact that mothers and daughters are genetically different is only one reason moms just never get someone “just like” them. Mothers and daughters grow up in different eras. A woman of my mother’s era may feel that her professional options were limited — teacher or nurse, maybe, but these were generally some sort of “skill builders” until Mr. Right came along.
My mother told me that her mother wanted to do something vaguely medical, even had some kind of an interest in laboratory analysis. But she ended up being some kind of a religious philanthropist, starting Jewish institutions. Nice, but not hands-on caring for other people, if that is where your passion is.
There are other differences, in family and upbringing, that are too great to describe. Here is a superficial if not-otherwise bad article on this from our friends at Good Housekeeping and Web MD.
But wait, there’s more. Consider the 32-year-old woman with allegedly healthy five and seven year old children at home, who said she was wildly depressed because her mother did not visit, did not come around at all, and could not seem to have a good, happy relationship with her.
I asked her the obvious question. What kind of activities did she enjoy with her mother? I tried not to jump when I heard the response.
“Armed Robbery.” Read more on Family Bonding As Outlaws…
Filed under Family by on Jan 18th, 2011. Comment.
It seems to be important that this drug bust, which tied relatively well-to-do Columbia students to low-class drug pushers, is labeled as an “Ivy League” bust.
If it is “high class,” does this make it less bad to violate the law? Somehow I think of a woman I recently met, Sydney Biddle Barrows, the Mayflower Madam. I received her recent book on marketing as a gift, and whatever her past, she seems to be an astute businesswoman. In person she was exceedingly pleasant, and dressed a LOT more conservatively than would expect of a woman of her reputation. The idea is that people made a great deal of her past because she was a woman who made a profession of managing prostitutes, but did it with both business sense and panache. In America, where we often proudly say we are a classless society — but we aren’t. It seems to me that there are few places where we value “class” more than breaking the law.
Read more on Does Crime Pay For Classy Criminals?…
Filed under News by on Jan 7th, 2011. Comment.