Social Security Initial Claim -- Lack of Deception

June 15, 1993
3801 Connecticut Ave., NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008

Paul G. Yessler, MD
2501 Calvert Street, NW
Suite 101
Washington, DC 20008

RE: Social Security Disability Psychiatric Evaluation xxx-xx-xxxx

Dear Dr. Yessler:

Enclosed is a copy of five pages of handwritten notes that I prepared in late October 1991 under the influence of my belief that the then manager of my apartment building, Ms. Elaine Wranik, inspected the apartment daily and reported her findings back to management of my former employer, Akin Gump. I left the notes in a prominent place in my Apartment to be reviewed by Ms. Wranik, in the period immediately prior to my job termination, on October 29, 1991.

I also left for Ms. Wranik the enclosed page from a text on shamanism.  The comparison of my psychology with that of a “medicine man” is evidence of bizarre ideation.

Both the content of the writing and my motive in writing the document may evidence a grave personality disturbance not inconsistent with a diagnosis DSM-III 295.32 (Schizophrenia, stable paranoid type, chronic), which renders me unemployable. See, Spitzer, R.L., et al., DSM-III-R Case Book, at 28-30 (American Psychiatric Press: 1989)  (discussing a patient suffering from a systematized delusion of a conspiracy of harassment).

Sincerely,

Gary Freedman

The documents I submitted to Dr. Yessler were all prepared prior to my job termination at a time when I had no idea I would be terminated, and much less, terminated for mental health reasons that might qualify me for disability benefits.

Uncannily, the enclosed page from a text on shamanism was from a book edited by Gertrude R. Ticho, M.D. According to my former employer, the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, it was Dr. Ticho who advised the firm in late October 1991 that I appeared to have serious mental problems that might be associated with a risk of violence. I did not learn the identity of Akin Gump’s psychiatric consultant until I received the Initial Determination (dated June 30, 1993) from the D.C. Department of Human Rights that identified Dr. Ticho as Akin Gump’s psychiatric consultation. The text is The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, vol. 7, Edited by W. Muensterberger with A.H. Esman and . B. Boyer (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1976), Gertrude R. Ticho, M.D., Washington, D.C., contributing editor.

The issue of Shamanism arises in my book, Significant Moments:

      One of Freud's basic psychoanalytic strategies is to hide his face and act as a blank screen. This self-effacing performance encourages the patient to . . .
Ken Frieden, Freud's Dream of Interpretation.
      . . . initiate and dominate the stage . . .
Rosemary H. Balsam, Neutrality and Loewald's Metaphor of Theater.
            . . . to transfer his or her emotional attachments onto Freud in a first step toward working through childhood complexes.
Ken Frieden, Freud's Dream of Interpretation.
      The analyst . . .
Rosemary H. Balsam, Neutrality and Loewald's Metaphor of Theater.
         . . . sits quietly, . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy.
              . . . watches the play, while being in his mind also a co-actor.
Rosemary H. Balsam, Neutrality and Loewald's Metaphor of Theater.
      The analytic psychodrama leaves Freud's image an enigma, because within the walls of his office he surrenders his identity to the phantoms that haunt his patients . . .
Ken Frieden, Freud's Dream of Interpretation.
                     . . . continually . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy.
                               . . . attending to the form of the moment of communication while bearing in mind the whole session as it echoes and repeats the form of the patient's life drama—
Rosemary H. Balsam, Neutrality and Loewald's Metaphor of Theater.
      Transference to a shaman is an ancient, worldwide technique of healing, widely studied by anthropologists and scholars of the history of religion. Shamanism preceded psychoanalysis and will survive it; it is the purest form of dynamic psychiatry.
Harold Bloom, The Western Canon: The Books and School of the Ages.
      Freud might have founded psychoanalysis, but he did so, consciously or not, on much older foundations laid by practicing shamans throughout the world and over the millenia.
Michael Ripinsky-Naxon, The Nature of Shamanism.
      We are concerned here, in particular, . . .
Richard Day and Ronald H. Davidson, Magic and Healing: An Ethnopsychoanalytic Examination.
           . . . at this moment in our journey. . .
Radio Interview of President William Jefferson Clinton by CBS News (December 11, 1999).
                     . . .with the individuals . . .
Richard Day and Ronald H. Davidson, Magic and Healing: An Ethnopsychoanalytic Examination.
                             . . . who have been . . .
K.R. Eissler, Talent and Genius.
                                     . . . referred to as “lightening conductors of common anxiety”—medicine men, sorcerers, shamans—who articulate a personal reformulation through the role of healer and who seek, by the alleviation of group anxiety, their own sense of identity and security.
Richard Day and Ronald H. Davidson, Magic and Healing: An Ethnopsychoanalytic Examination.
      To both . . .
Isaac Deutscher, Marc Chagall and the Jewish Imagination.
         . . . the analyst and . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder (“Insight as Metaphor”).
                . . . the Shaman . . .
Jack London, The Son of the Wolf.
                       . . . metaphor is essential.
Isaac Deutscher, Marc Chagall and the Jewish Imagination.
      The shaman conveys metaphors addressed to the spirit world through drumming, chants, dance, myths, drama, or more appropriately, psychodrama . . .
Michael Ripinsky-Naxon, The Nature of Shamanism.
         . . . and by means of this . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy.
                  . . . fills the void wrought in the texture of existence by the incomprehensible experience of suffering. He serves as the link . . .
Charles Ducey, The Life History and Creative Psychopathology of the Shaman.
                            . . . that connects mystery to mystery, the known with the unknown . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
                                     . . . and straight away, that is to say, out of himself, . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals.
      . . . the shaman . . .
Jack London, The Law of Life.
               . . . creates . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Genealogy of Morals.
                     . . . a metaphorical bridge . . .
Leonard Shengold, Soul Murder.
                                . . . between the everyday human world and the realm of the ineffable, the unconscious, or, in his subjective belief, the supernatural, and like Persephone he inhabits both worlds. He must experience the alien within himself as a prerequisite for interpreting and conferring significance upon the suffering of those who consult him for help against illness or misfortune. The personal experience of the alien, which resembles a mental disorder, is a major source of the apparent effectiveness of his form of psychotherapy, as it encourages the development of a greater than normal psychological sensitivity for his ever-renewed attempts to heal himself and his culture mates.
Charles Ducey, The Life History and Creative Psychopathology of the Shaman.
      To put it in a nutshell:
Pawel Dybel, The Dilemmas of Psychoanalytic Interpretation.
      The shaman, . . .
Charles Ducey, The Life History and Creative Psychopathology of the Shaman.
           . . . the man of magic . . .
Richard Day and Ronald H. Davidson, Magic and Healing: An Ethnopsychoanalytic Examination.
                    . . . so singularly capable of suffering, . . .
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Birth of Tragedy.
                               . . . is ill for conventional reasons and in a conventional way; his conflicts are simply unusually intense; he is like everyone else, only more so.
George Devereux, Normal and Abnormal.