Friday, January 28, 2011

For the Chapters: "I Guess I'm Still Psychotic" and "How to Commit Legal Racketeering"

On Tuesday January 25, 2011 I had a consult with my psychotherapist, a psychiatry resident.  During the session I said, "I feel I need to be intimidated by a person.  I feel I need that tension with a person.  I feel that need to be intimidated in psychotherapy and I feel that need in life."

The therapist responded by saying that psychotherapy isn't what it was "30 years ago."  He said that psychiatry was far more "interactive."  In effect, he was saying, at least as I understood it, that therapists were not as paternalistic as they used to be.

I had an immediate idea of reference.  See Freedman v. D.C. Department of Human Rights, D.C.C.A. no. 96-CV-961 (Sept. 1, 1998) (an employer may find an employee not suitable for employment by reason of business necessity if he exhibits the "disorder" ideas of reference, which an employer may credibly find may be associated with a risk of violence).

I thought of a paragraph from a post I published on this blog on Friday January 21, 2011 titled: DOJ Interview: Prior Perceptions that Colored My Interpretation.

I thought my psychiatrist was referring to the following specific paragraph from that post:

3. During telephone conversations I had with my sister she seemed increasingly agitated over the weeks and months of the fall of 2009. In about December 2009 I recall one conversation in which I picked up a stream of symbolic references to my mother. My mother had died in early January 1980, almost 30 years earlier. I formed the tentative theory that my sister had been asked by somebody, "Do you have any idea why your brother would be blogging about these matters at this particular time? What would motivate your brother to write these things on the Internet?" I formed the belief that my sister responded, "January 2010 will be the 30th anniversary of my mother's death. Maybe he's reacting to that."

I believed that the therapist's use of the term "30 years ago" was a reference to my mother's death in early January 1980.  I believed that his use of the word "interactive" was a play on words.  "Interactive" can refer to interpersonal relations but also to the relationship between a person and a computer.

I continue to have the "disorder" ideas of reference, which an employer may credibly find, see Fuentes (even in an above-average or outstanding employee with no record of reprimands oral or written), renders an employee potentially violent and unemployable by reason of business necessity.  See Freedman.

2 comments:

My Daily Struggles said...

Next week I get another check from the Treasury. I love "ideas of reference."

My Daily Struggles said...

From a definition of the word "interactive":

• Hardware and software systems which can respond to input from users: minimally, by offering a limited range of options and choices; ultimately, by providing a variety of resources which allow users to act spontaneously and react constructively, to explore a body of knowledge and create a ...
publications.europa.eu/vademecum/vademecum/9313fdfe-c49e-119e-45c6a6441e63e066_en.html