Fictional Statement of Albert H. Taub, M.D.

TO: Albert H. Taub, M.D. (telephone 282 2229)
FROM: Gary Freedman
DATE: August 27, 1998
RE: Creative Piece Concerning Medical Recommendation
__________________________

I respect your position that I suffer from a mental illness that calls for the prescription of a neuroleptic, which illness is consistent with my continued eligibility for disability benefits paid by the U.S. Social Security Administration. Nonetheless, I have prepared the following creative piece that was inspired by your medical recommendation and your own statement, or admission, made at our last consultation, on August 20, 1998, that I am simply "looking for an argument" in asking you to sign a statement that delimits the reasons for your prescription.

FICTIONAL STATEMENT OF ALBERT H. TAUB, M.D.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with you, Freedman. No way am I going to prescribe medication for you. Medication won't do anything for you, because your problem is not a mental disturbance. It's not a psychiatric symptom. Your problem is that you are a 44-year-old adolescent. You never grew up. That's not a mental disturbance. You have an adolescent's need to turn everything into a dispute with the system. That's your whole life.

When you were fired from your job in '91, you could have looked for work. There was nothing to stop you. Look, thousands of people get fired from their jobs every year. They have grievances against their employers. But they get on with their lives. They're out there pounding the pavement looking for work. They don't just sit home, and write letters on their word processor, driving every law enforcement agency crazy with their stupid letters. But you, what did you do? You turn your job termination into a holy war. Granted, those people you worked for were a bunch of idiots. But a lot of people get fired by idiots. They move on. With you everything has to be an argument with society. Who died and made you Martin Luther?

Your behavior is not the behavior of a mentally disturbed person. It's the behavior of an immature person. Like I say, you're 44 years old, but you act like a 16-year-old. Medication's not going to help you. Psychotherapy's not going to solve your problems.

Now, Wiener. Jerry Wiener. Of course, those people at GW say you suffer from schizophrenia.

And what else was it? Bi-polar disorder? Delusional paranoid disorder? And, what else? Oh, schizoaffective disorder. But, of course, they weren't quite sure about the schizoaffective disorder! [Dr. Taub laughs.] They have to say that. It's purely institutional. That's what they deal in. Psychiatric diagnoses, medication. It's like the Catholic Church. They have to say that everything bad is the work of the devil. That's their institutional world view.

Do you think a priest would have the courage to tell the Pope that original sin is not the cause of a person's problems, that communion wafers aren't going to do a damn thing to save a person's soul? Do you really think some stupid schmuck of a psychiatry resident is going to go to Wiener and say that a patient doesn't have a mental disturbance and that medication isn't going to help him? The whole raison d'ˆtre of the Catholic Church is sin. No sin, no church. The whole raison d'ˆtre of the psychiatric establishment is psychiatric illness. No psychiatric illness, no medication.

In my mind the testing, the psychological testing they did, that said it all. No psychotic thought processes, no mental illness, no impairment in ego strength. Palombo was right. You're employable, Freedman.

Not only am I not going to prescribe medication, I am going to send a letter to the Social Security Administration; I'm going to tell those people what I think is going on here. You're milking the system. You applied for benefits to milk the system, and create some kind of conflict between agencies of the District Government. You tried to pit the Corporation Counsel's Office against the Rehabilitation Services Administration. You tried to pit your former employer against the Social Security Administration. Where did that get you? Nowhere. All these people just think you're a nut case. But it did allow you to continue to milk the system.

Now Quint. Stephen Quint? He doesn't have the nerve to tell any agency that this whole thing is a total fraud. That there's nothing wrong with you. He's what I call a loyal parish priest of the psychiatric establishment. It's institutional. Spends his entire career as a psychiatrist in a public clinic! Without the Social Security Disability system, he'd have to find a whole new career -- or a career. You and Quint have your own codependent relationship going. You milk the system, and Quint helps you milk the system, because it benefits him to depict you as needing the services of this clinic. He's your enabler.

You're life is just one big argument with the system. I guarantee you. Even on your deathbed you'll probably be writing up a complaint to the medical board about the doctors who treated you in your final days. That was your life Freedman, your whole life. Your epitaph will read: "It's better to have argued with the system and lost, than never to have lost at all."

And the Corporation Counsel's Office? What a delight they are. The whole pack of them. If they had any integrity as lawyers, they would have declined to defend that case. More loyal priests of the system. They're like a bunch of Mafia lawyers defending a corrupt organization.

Get a job, Freedman. Forget about psychiatry.