Once upon a time there was a Psychiatrist who had a patient who was murdered. He left the day that day and brought it home with him from work, how could he not? He was very angry and disturbed and he showed it. He was all alone and inside himself. Later on he would be interviewed in a book about this case.
He always seemed to bring his work home with him, how could he not? When his eldest son was an adult he started telling him stories of how uncomfortable it was to be a psychiatrist of a community, that he always felt trapped in the confidentiality of it. For instance he would say that when he would see a patient at an event, that he would have to leave right away. Or if he were to bump into someone at the grocery store, that it would be not just unprofessional, but unacceptable, to say hello.
He always had negative things to say about the pharmaceutical companies as well as the insurance companies. Even though, he was making his fortune off of them.
If you go online and google his name there is a long list online of reviews, of which approx. 80% of them are negative, angry and even hateful. A lot of them have to do with comments that he made to patients about their weight, something he did to all of his family members about weight, and diet, and health. He is a doctor after all.
In 1996 he published what he called a handbook on abuse and how to recover from it. He even invented and branded a specific form of therapy for children. In the book, he talks about “power struggles” and “control struggles” and he talks openly about experiencing these kinds of struggles with his patients. He stated how his patients would sometimes project their own issues onto him, and never the other way around. He does not entertain of the idea that it could also be going both ways. They are always bringing their fight to him.
(It is important to note, which will be done later on, that there is a possibility that he was projecting all of his power control neuroses struggles, fear insecurity, all of his unresolved open wounds, family dysfunction and current family estrangement, that he is projecting it all over his patience, and then using this to diagnose his patients. Based in a tainted upside down, fear-filled point of view that is constantly scanning for conflict and expressing it automatically. This lack of self and other awareness is a lens and attitude displayed towards people that can often be hyper-exaggerated, deprecating, dehumanizing, extremely dismissive and passive aggressive. This is the one thing that stands out in his book. Again, a critique for another time.)
In his book it seems he is dealing with many contradictions of this kind. His head may even be in the right place at times, talking about language and relations and kindness. However in real-life it seems he is unable to follow, or remember, his own advice.
Later in his career, he claimed to no longer believe in talk therapy, most likely because of these struggles discussed above. He sees each of his patients for 15 minutes and checks in on how their medication is treating or mistreating them. If the latter then he increases or decreasing the dosage and sends them off with a new prescription. Nothing personal anymore whereas in the past, especially when dealing with children, there was more time spent discussing life. Or so it seemed to be told in this way.
One time he had a patient or a former patient who broke and entered into his his office through the side window, but did not take anything. Instead this patient left a gift for this psychiatrist. And that gift was a pile of human feces on the carpet floor. When he arrived home that day early from work, he told his oldest son what had happened and he very upset. He said right away that he had an idea of who it was and they were dusting for fingerprints as they spoke. That day they had to repair the window and get new carpeting and have it cleaned deeply to remove the smell. It was a shameful day ordeal.
Sometimes when he would come home from work he would tell stories about his patients. Obviously he did this without stating names but the stories were always very detailed, and often very disturbing. The stories were almost always tales about their family members, and the psychological torture they were experiencing, which they believed was self-inflicted; dark and twisted fantasies, sometimes violent, sometimes, non violent. Sometimes sexual in nature and all of it is stuff better left unrepeated.
Important to note, however, that this is what this psychiatrist is experiencing this day in and day out. He mentions in a chapter in his book how he must shut himself off emotionally from these stories or else it would totally drain him. In a way he has to detach but even dehumanize himself, to remain neutral and uninvolved and robotic. He sits there with his pen and paper, and eventually behind his laptop, annotating for his professional records. This becomes a handy tool for dealing with extreme emotional conflict. In this case it is far from personal, yet he’s still turning his sensitivity off completely.
His entity, his emotional defense is up, the gates to the fortress are down. No story can alter his equilibrium this way. He does not empathize because he will not survive from where he sits in his office chair. He does not sympathize either with his patients because this would have a similar effect. He is practicing all day every day, this emotional disappearing act. Again he discusses this in his book, heeding advice to other psychologists alike.
It is very interesting to consider what exactly is the job of the psychiatrist?All day he takes in information and then responds with a diagnosis from the DSN-5, a manual with everything ranging from Oppositional Defiant Disorder to Internet Gaming Disorder, and then he matches a medication with it. He goal is to diagnose and treat everyone who comes into his office. That is his job.
His father was a doctor too, and one who served in World War II as a medic in the Guadalcanal in the malaria unit. It is a commonly held sentiment by the loved ones of people who went to war, that after you return from war, they are never the same. His father passed at the age of 69 and he was the last of 5 siblings still home when he died. He was very close to him and the other time he ever cries is when he talks about it. Soon thereafter, he would decide officially to continue the family business and go to medical school. It was really the only thing handed down to him.
To be continued…
FUNâś°POV
(From the “Project Empathy: Going Transparent” Series, Aug. 2020)
Transcribed by https://otter.ai
