September 22, 1999
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Nancy Shaffer, Ph.D.
Community Mental Health Center
Washington, DC 20007
tel: (202) 228-2229
Dear Dr. Shaffer:
I submit a copy of a personality profile of myself that I prepared; the document is complete except for one subsection.
http://dailstrug.blogspot.com/2010/01/gary-freedman-comprehensive-personality.html
The document reviews my psychological development and dynamics, and incorporates selected issues disclosed by comprehensive psychological testing performed by GW in 1994. The document is based largely on the literature. While there may be a question about whether all of the highlighted issues accurately represent my personality, the document is, nonetheless, a rational and internally-consistent picture of an individual.
I believe the document raises substantial questions about whether supportive psychotherapy with a Ph.D. psychologist can have any value for me. Dr. Taub has in the past refused to assist me in locating appropriate alternative care.
The Commission on Mental Health Services is currently billing Medicare about $9600 per year: 5 monthly consultations @$150 + $50 professional fees. I believe it is problematic for Dr. Taub, a physician, to permit this to go on indefinitely if a reasoned consideration of my personality difficulties, based on objective criteria, indicates that I might derive more benefit from mental health services outside the Commission.
By the time I reach age 65, the Commission will have billed Medicare about $201,600 for professional services. Some might ask whether the Commission is not simply using the Medicare system as a cash cow. Of course, my personality difficulties are quite severe. We know that because Dr. Taub has diagnosed me as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia.
I am taking the liberty of forwarding this document to David Fram, M.D., an officer of the Washington Psychiatric Society, the local branch office of the American Psychiatric Association. Perhaps Dr. Fram would consent to review this matter with Dr. Taub.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
cc: David Fram, M.D., Washington Psychiatric Society
Friday, April 30, 2010
On Doing Your Own Investigation -- Temple Law Professor
June 23, 1997
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
David Weinstein
Professor of Law
Temple University School of Law
1719 N. Broad Street
Philadelphia, PA 19122
RE: Weapons Possession - Intent to Inflict Grievous Bodily Harm/Possible Intent to Commit Murder - D.C. Corporation Counsel Affirmation - Possible Concealment of State and/or Federal Weapons Law Violations
Dear Professor Weinstein:
During the period March 1988 to October 1991 I was employed as a legal assistant at the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld ("Akin Gump"). Attorney managers at Akin Gump terminated my employment effective October 29, 1991 upon determining, in consultation with a psychiatrist, that a complaint of harassment I had lodged against several co-workers was attributable to a psychiatric symptom ("ideas of reference") prominent in the psychotic disorders and typically associated with a risk of violent behavior. See Freedman v. D.C. Dept. of Human Rights, D.C. Superior Court no. MPA 95-14 (final order issued June 10, 1996) (name of state court judge redacted at the implicit direction of the Justice Department). In the period immediately after my job termination senior Akin Gump managers determined that it was advisable to secure the office of my direct supervisor against a possible homicidal assault, which it was feared I might commit.
In pleadings filed in the District of Columbia Superior Court, the District of Columbia Office of Corporation Counsel (Charles F.C. Ruff, Esq.) affirmed that Akin Gump personnel had geniune concerns that I might have had plans to procure firearms for an unlawful purpose and possessed the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm or commit murder. Mr. Ruff currently serves as chief White House Counsel to President Clinton (telephone no. 202 456 1414).
I was awarded the degree of Juris Doctor by the Temple University School of Law in May 1982, and was a student in two of your courses. You prepared a letter of recommendation for me, dated December 9, 1981, a copy of which is enclosed for your reference.
I have been under investigation by the U.S. Secret Service as a potential security risk to President Clinton, and was interrogated at the Washington Field Office by Special Agent Philip C. Leadroot (202 435-5100) as recently as February 1996, about 16 months ago. Questioning by Mr. Leadroot centered on the issue of presidential assassination.
I request that you disclose to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (David M. Bowie, Supervisory Special Agent, Washington Field Office, 202 252 7801) the content of any communications you may have had with any Akin Gump attorneys regarding me. Attorneys who may have directed inquiries to you include Earl L. Segal, Malcolm Lassman, or Laurence J. Hoffman (managing partner), among others.
I have formed the (unsubstantiated) belief that Akin Gump did contact you some time in late 1989 or 1990, and that you stated in response that you had no personal recollection of me.
Enclosed are some additional documents that provide background to the matters discussed in this letter.
Be advised: President Clinton's own lawyer, chief White House Counsel Charles F.C. Ruff, is talking real guns, real bullets, real brain tissue.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
David Weinstein
Professor of Law
Temple University School of Law
1719 N. Broad Street
Philadelphia, PA 19122
RE: Weapons Possession - Intent to Inflict Grievous Bodily Harm/Possible Intent to Commit Murder - D.C. Corporation Counsel Affirmation - Possible Concealment of State and/or Federal Weapons Law Violations
Dear Professor Weinstein:
During the period March 1988 to October 1991 I was employed as a legal assistant at the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld ("Akin Gump"). Attorney managers at Akin Gump terminated my employment effective October 29, 1991 upon determining, in consultation with a psychiatrist, that a complaint of harassment I had lodged against several co-workers was attributable to a psychiatric symptom ("ideas of reference") prominent in the psychotic disorders and typically associated with a risk of violent behavior. See Freedman v. D.C. Dept. of Human Rights, D.C. Superior Court no. MPA 95-14 (final order issued June 10, 1996) (name of state court judge redacted at the implicit direction of the Justice Department). In the period immediately after my job termination senior Akin Gump managers determined that it was advisable to secure the office of my direct supervisor against a possible homicidal assault, which it was feared I might commit.
In pleadings filed in the District of Columbia Superior Court, the District of Columbia Office of Corporation Counsel (Charles F.C. Ruff, Esq.) affirmed that Akin Gump personnel had geniune concerns that I might have had plans to procure firearms for an unlawful purpose and possessed the intent to inflict grievous bodily harm or commit murder. Mr. Ruff currently serves as chief White House Counsel to President Clinton (telephone no. 202 456 1414).
I was awarded the degree of Juris Doctor by the Temple University School of Law in May 1982, and was a student in two of your courses. You prepared a letter of recommendation for me, dated December 9, 1981, a copy of which is enclosed for your reference.
I have been under investigation by the U.S. Secret Service as a potential security risk to President Clinton, and was interrogated at the Washington Field Office by Special Agent Philip C. Leadroot (202 435-5100) as recently as February 1996, about 16 months ago. Questioning by Mr. Leadroot centered on the issue of presidential assassination.
I request that you disclose to the Federal Bureau of Investigation (David M. Bowie, Supervisory Special Agent, Washington Field Office, 202 252 7801) the content of any communications you may have had with any Akin Gump attorneys regarding me. Attorneys who may have directed inquiries to you include Earl L. Segal, Malcolm Lassman, or Laurence J. Hoffman (managing partner), among others.
I have formed the (unsubstantiated) belief that Akin Gump did contact you some time in late 1989 or 1990, and that you stated in response that you had no personal recollection of me.
Enclosed are some additional documents that provide background to the matters discussed in this letter.
Be advised: President Clinton's own lawyer, chief White House Counsel Charles F.C. Ruff, is talking real guns, real bullets, real brain tissue.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
Social Security Administration -- Final Disposition of Court Case
September 5, 1998
3801 Connecticut Ave., NW #136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Larry G. Massanari
Regional Commissioner
Office of Disability & Intl. Operations
Social Security Administration
Baltimore, MD 21241-0001
RE: Social Security Disability Claim no. xxx xx xxxx
Dear Mr. Massanari:
Enclosed is a copy of the Memorandum Opinion and Judgment filed by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on September 1, 1998 in Freedman v. D.C. Dept. of Human Rights, no. 96-CV-961.
The Court affirmed the determination made by the D.C. Department of Human Rights that there was no probable cause to believe that the action of my former employer, the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, in terminating my employment effective October 29, 1991 was based on anything other than valid business reasons, namely, that the employer had formed genuine concerns about my mental health and stability.
You may review this matter with the Honorable John A. Terry, a member of the appeals panel that heard the case. Judge Terry's telephone number at the Court is (202) 879-2780.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
cc: Office of City Administrator (D.C.)
3801 Connecticut Ave., NW #136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Larry G. Massanari
Regional Commissioner
Office of Disability & Intl. Operations
Social Security Administration
Baltimore, MD 21241-0001
RE: Social Security Disability Claim no. xxx xx xxxx
Dear Mr. Massanari:
Enclosed is a copy of the Memorandum Opinion and Judgment filed by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on September 1, 1998 in Freedman v. D.C. Dept. of Human Rights, no. 96-CV-961.
The Court affirmed the determination made by the D.C. Department of Human Rights that there was no probable cause to believe that the action of my former employer, the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, in terminating my employment effective October 29, 1991 was based on anything other than valid business reasons, namely, that the employer had formed genuine concerns about my mental health and stability.
You may review this matter with the Honorable John A. Terry, a member of the appeals panel that heard the case. Judge Terry's telephone number at the Court is (202) 879-2780.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
cc: Office of City Administrator (D.C.)
Social Security Administration: On Interrupting the FBI's Canasta Game!
September 8, 1998
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW #136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Larry G. Massanari
Regional Commissioner
Office of Disability & Intl. Operations -- SSA
Baltimore, MD 21241-0001
RE: Social Security Disability Claim xxx-xx-xxxx
Dear Mr. Massanari:
This will advise the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) that I have filed a formal written request with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (Washington Field Office) that the agency undertake a Substantial Weight Review of the prior determination made by the District of Columbia Department of Human Rights that there was no probable cause to believe that my job termination by the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld effective October 29, 1991 (the date my disability began) was discriminatory, but rather, was based on a valid business reason: namely, the employer's determination, made in consultation with a psychiatrist, that I suffered from a psychiatric "disorder" 1/, which rendered me not suitable for employment.
I draw your specific attention to paragraph 5 of the letter addressed to former EEOC Chairman Gilbert F. Casellas dated December 20, 1996 (copy attached) that cites the action of the employer, in the period following the employer's disability determination (i.e., its determination that I suffered from a "disorder" 1/), in failing to advise me of its psychiatric consultation with Gertrude R. Ticho, M.D., which would have alerted me to file a claim for benefits under the employer's private disability income plan. The employer's tortious breach of duty in failing to advise me of the results of its psychiatric consultation 2/ necessarily resulted in my subsequent action in filing for a claim for benefits with the SSA. In effect, the employer shifted the burden of benefits payments from its private insurer onto the SSA.
I invite the SSA to review this matter with the EEOC (Laura Nawrocki, State and Local Coordinator). You may contact Ms. Nawrocki at (202) 275-7377.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
cc: Jerome O. Campane, S.A., FBI Washington Field Office (202 252-7801)
1/ The D.C. Court of Appeals expressly found that the professional opinion offered by Gertrude R. Ticho, M.D. to the employer amounted to the diagnosis of a "disorder" ("the firm . . . learned that appellant's behavior was indicative of a disorder"). Freedman v. D.C. Department of Human Rights at 6, No. 96-CV-961 (Memorandum Opinion and Judgment filed Sept. 1, 1998).
2/ An employer has a duty, arising out of common law, to disclose to an employee, prior to or during employment, information the employer acquires when a physician it engages discovers a serious medical problem while examining the employee in accordance with the employer's requirements. See Meinze v. Holmes, 532 N.E.2d 170, 173 (Ohio App. 1987) citing Betesh v. United States, 400 F. Supp. 238, 245 (D.D.C. 1974) (interpreting Maryland common law). Clearly, a "disorder" qualifies as a serious medical problem about which the employer was required to advise me.
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW #136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Larry G. Massanari
Regional Commissioner
Office of Disability & Intl. Operations -- SSA
Baltimore, MD 21241-0001
RE: Social Security Disability Claim xxx-xx-xxxx
Dear Mr. Massanari:
This will advise the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) that I have filed a formal written request with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (Washington Field Office) that the agency undertake a Substantial Weight Review of the prior determination made by the District of Columbia Department of Human Rights that there was no probable cause to believe that my job termination by the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld effective October 29, 1991 (the date my disability began) was discriminatory, but rather, was based on a valid business reason: namely, the employer's determination, made in consultation with a psychiatrist, that I suffered from a psychiatric "disorder" 1/, which rendered me not suitable for employment.
I draw your specific attention to paragraph 5 of the letter addressed to former EEOC Chairman Gilbert F. Casellas dated December 20, 1996 (copy attached) that cites the action of the employer, in the period following the employer's disability determination (i.e., its determination that I suffered from a "disorder" 1/), in failing to advise me of its psychiatric consultation with Gertrude R. Ticho, M.D., which would have alerted me to file a claim for benefits under the employer's private disability income plan. The employer's tortious breach of duty in failing to advise me of the results of its psychiatric consultation 2/ necessarily resulted in my subsequent action in filing for a claim for benefits with the SSA. In effect, the employer shifted the burden of benefits payments from its private insurer onto the SSA.
I invite the SSA to review this matter with the EEOC (Laura Nawrocki, State and Local Coordinator). You may contact Ms. Nawrocki at (202) 275-7377.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
cc: Jerome O. Campane, S.A., FBI Washington Field Office (202 252-7801)
1/ The D.C. Court of Appeals expressly found that the professional opinion offered by Gertrude R. Ticho, M.D. to the employer amounted to the diagnosis of a "disorder" ("the firm . . . learned that appellant's behavior was indicative of a disorder"). Freedman v. D.C. Department of Human Rights at 6, No. 96-CV-961 (Memorandum Opinion and Judgment filed Sept. 1, 1998).
2/ An employer has a duty, arising out of common law, to disclose to an employee, prior to or during employment, information the employer acquires when a physician it engages discovers a serious medical problem while examining the employee in accordance with the employer's requirements. See Meinze v. Holmes, 532 N.E.2d 170, 173 (Ohio App. 1987) citing Betesh v. United States, 400 F. Supp. 238, 245 (D.D.C. 1974) (interpreting Maryland common law). Clearly, a "disorder" qualifies as a serious medical problem about which the employer was required to advise me.
Message for the Justice Department: Only Three More Days Till My Next Check!
Only three more days and I get my next check from the federal government! I suppose the Justice Department never imagined that it would become unwitting dupes in a fraud and racketeering conspiracy. But, in fact, that's what they've done. Because of the Justice Department I can now say that as of January 15, 2010, the Justice Department has deemed me mentally disturbed and potentially violent, prompting the DOJ to impose protective measures against me. God, don't you just love it? The Justice Department--unwitting dupes in a fraud and racketeering conspiracy! Or as Elmer Fudd would say: "Unwitting dupes in a fwaud and wacketeewing conspiwacy!"
How I love my free money! Message for the DOJ: Want to bar me from any other federal facilities or neighborhood synagogues? Go ahead, make my day!
On Friday January 15, 2010 two law enforcement officers were sent by the U.S. Department of Justice to interview me with respect to written statements I made on my blog, My Daily Struggles. Reportedly, I had aroused law enforcement concerns because I had committed the following crimes against the state:
1. Three-and-one-half years ago, in July 2006, I revised a Wikipedia article about a federal official (whose name I have been ordered not to reveal by the U.S. Department of Justice). I added three facts to the biographical account of the official: facts that are public information and readily accessible on the internet.
2. I had praised the federal official effusively on my blog, and referred to that official in several posts.
3. I disclosed on my blog personal facts about the official that are public information and readily accessible on the internet.
4. I quoted from that individual's official pronouncements, pronouncements that are public information and readily accessible on the internet. The pronouncements in question were highly critical of -- and, no doubt, embarrassed -- the U.S. Department of Justice, the department that sent two officers to interview me and silence me on January 15, 2010.
5. I had sent a copy of a book I had written to the official's spouse several years ago; the book was praised by a Professor of History at The Pennsylvania State University, Paul Lawrence Rose.
Such were my crimes against the state.
Incidentally, since last fall I have been writing a blog that probably embarrasses a powerful law firm that has close ties to the Justice Department. Oddly enough, in the 1990s a partner at the law firm tried to buy the silence of a White House intern who possessed embarrassing information about a close, personal friend of that partner. Would that firm try to silence me, by means legal or illegal? I don't know. I have been diagnosed with severe mental illness by that very firm. My speculations have no reliability.
How I love my free money! Message for the DOJ: Want to bar me from any other federal facilities or neighborhood synagogues? Go ahead, make my day!
On Friday January 15, 2010 two law enforcement officers were sent by the U.S. Department of Justice to interview me with respect to written statements I made on my blog, My Daily Struggles. Reportedly, I had aroused law enforcement concerns because I had committed the following crimes against the state:
1. Three-and-one-half years ago, in July 2006, I revised a Wikipedia article about a federal official (whose name I have been ordered not to reveal by the U.S. Department of Justice). I added three facts to the biographical account of the official: facts that are public information and readily accessible on the internet.
2. I had praised the federal official effusively on my blog, and referred to that official in several posts.
3. I disclosed on my blog personal facts about the official that are public information and readily accessible on the internet.
4. I quoted from that individual's official pronouncements, pronouncements that are public information and readily accessible on the internet. The pronouncements in question were highly critical of -- and, no doubt, embarrassed -- the U.S. Department of Justice, the department that sent two officers to interview me and silence me on January 15, 2010.
5. I had sent a copy of a book I had written to the official's spouse several years ago; the book was praised by a Professor of History at The Pennsylvania State University, Paul Lawrence Rose.
Such were my crimes against the state.
Incidentally, since last fall I have been writing a blog that probably embarrasses a powerful law firm that has close ties to the Justice Department. Oddly enough, in the 1990s a partner at the law firm tried to buy the silence of a White House intern who possessed embarrassing information about a close, personal friend of that partner. Would that firm try to silence me, by means legal or illegal? I don't know. I have been diagnosed with severe mental illness by that very firm. My speculations have no reliability.
Thursday, April 29, 2010
Albert H. Taub, MD -- Proposed Informed Consent Statement
October 12, 1999
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Albert H. Taub, M.D.
Community Mental Health Center
3246 P Street, NW
Washington, DC 20007
(202) 282-2229
Dear Dr. Taub:
At my last consultation with Dr. Shaffer (October 6, 1999) we reviewed the issue of medication. Both Dr. Shaffer and I agreed that I might benefit from antidepressant medication. Dr. Shaffer stated that she did not believe that antipsychotic medication was indicated.
The enclosed statement reviews issues relating to my treatment history as those issues pertain to the prescription of antidepressant medication administered singly.
As you know, paranoid schizophrenia is considered a contraindication for antidepressant medication administered singly, not in combination with other drugs.
The enclosed statement raises ethical and legal questions about inconsistencies in my treatment at the P Street Clinic: specifically, the appearance that you offered a disingenuous and self-serving clinical assessment of me to the D.C. Medical Board (Dx: paranoid schizophrenia; Rx: Zyprexa) simply to evade further scrutiny by the Board.
There is a further concern that your previous (self-serving) clinical assessments and treatment recommendations now preclude your prescribing antidepressant medication, the appropriate medication from which I might derive genuine benefit.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
Statement of Albert H. Taub, M.D., Made in Contemplation of Medical Prescription
INFORMED CONSENT
I, Albert H. Taub, M.D., a physician licensed to practice in the District of Columbia, and an employee of the Government of the District of Columbia (Commission on Mental Health Services [CMHS]), make the following statement in contemplation of prescribing antidepressant medication to my patient, Gary Freedman, CMHS patient no. 230923.
Mr. Freedman has been determined by the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) to have been continuously disabled since October 29, 1991, the date of his job termination by a local law firm, where Mr. Freedman had been employed as a paralegal.
During the period September 1992 to June 1996 Mr. Freedman underwent out-patient psychiatric treatment at the George Washington University Medical Center Department of Psychiatry. Mr. Freedman was admitted to the CMHS in mid-year 1996, where he currently receives weekly psychotherapy with staff psychologist Nancy Schaffer, Ph.D. Mr. Freedman consults with me approximately once per month for the purpose of assessing his overall status as well as the indications for medical therapy.
On the basis of my consultations with Mr. Freedman, as well as the recommendations of his current psychotherapist, I believe that Mr. Freedman might derive limited benefit from a course of therapy on antidepressant medication (Paxil), for the symptom chronic low-grade depression or dysthymia.
I affirm that my current medical recommendation is appropriate, notwithstanding the following facts relating to Mr. Freedman's psychiatric treatment history and past employment difficulties.
1. I understand that the George Washington University Medical Center Department of Psychiatry (GW) diagnosed Mr. Freedman as suffering from bi-polar disorder (rule out: schizoaffective disorder) in September 1992, for which Mr. Freedman was prescribed lithium by his treating psychiatrist Suzanne M. Pitts, M.D., for an approximate two-week period in February 1993.
I understand that Mr. Freedman declined to take Haldol, a neuroleptic that was recommended by Dr. Pitts, in August 1993.
I offer no opinion as to the appropriateness of Mr. Freedman's psychiatric treatment in the period prior to his admission by the CMHS, in mid-year 1996.
I understand that Mr. Freedman's previous diagnoses (bi-polar disorder and r/o schizoaffective disorder) are considered contraindications for antidepressant medication administered singly, not in combination with other drugs.
2. I affirm that Mr. Freedman underwent comprehensive psychological testing at GW in May 1994. The testing was administered by a psychology intern (Yu-Ling Han) under the supervision of GW staff psychologist William Fabian, Ph.D. The bill for the testing, prepared by Dr. Fabian, states the diagnosis delusional (paranoid) disorder.
I offer no opinion as to the appropriateness of any psychiatric diagnoses assigned to Mr. Freedman in the period prior to his admission by the CMHS, in mid-year 1996.
3. I affirm that in February 1996 Mr. Freedman's treating psychiatrist at GW, Dimitrios Georgopoulos, M.D., diagnosed Mr. Freedman as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, but that Mr. Freedman declined to take the (unspecified) neuroleptic recommended by Dr. Georgopoulos. See Letter dated February 14, 1996 from Dr. Georgopoulos to Mr. Freedman.
I offer no opinion as to the appropriateness of Mr. Freedman's psychiatric treatment in the period prior to his admission by the CMHS, in mid-year 1996.
I understand that Mr. Freedman's previous diagnosis (paranoid schizophrenia) is considered a contraindication for antidepressant medication administered singly, not in combination with other drugs.
4. I affirm that the U.S. Social Security Administration re-certified Mr. Freedman's disability claim in mid-year 1997 on the basis of a written clinical assessment provided to the agency by Mr. Freedman's treating psychiatrist at CMHS, Dr. Singh.
5. I affirm that I am aware that Mr. Freedman forwarded a letter dated January 24, 1998 to Dr. Singh (and copied to the Office of Independent Counsel, Kenneth W. Starr, Esq.) asserting that Mr. Freedman had been informed by his CMHS treating psychiatrist, Dr. Singh, on January 19, 1998, that it was the opinion of Dr. Singh as well as attending physician Steven D. Quint, M.D., that Mr. Freedman did not suffer from paranoid schizophrenia or any illness for which medication is indicated.
I offer no opinion as to the truth of the matters asserted in the said letter.
6. I affirm that I became Mr. Freedman's treating psychiatrist in early August 1998, and that shortly thereafter I recommended that Mr. Freedman take the neuroleptic, Zyprexa. Mr. Freedman declined to take the medication as I recommended.
7. I affirm that I advised the District of Columbia Board of Medicine (James R. Granger, Jr.) in writing, in response to a complaint filed by Mr. Freedman, that Mr. Freedman suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, an illness of long-standing duration, for which I had recommended a neuroleptic, which Mr. Freedman refused to take. See Letter dated February 22, 1999 from Albert H. Taub, M.D. to the D.C. Board of Medicine (James R. Granger, Jr.) ("In view of Mr. Freedman's long record of mental illness (paranoid schizophrenia) I recommended antipsychotic medication which he refused . . . .")
I understand that the diagnosis paranoid schizophrenia is considered a contraindication for antidepressant medication administered singly, not in combination with other drugs.
8. I affirm that Lisa Osborne, Mr. Freedman's CMHS psychotherapist (July 31, 1998 to September 3, 1999), prepared a Treatment Plan, per CMHS protocol, dated August 1999; the Treatment Plan, which I approved, states Mr. Freedman's current diagnosis as: Axis 1 -- rule out ("r/o") paranoid schizophrenia, r/o delusional (paranoid) disorder; Axis 2 -- narcissistic personality disorder. I affirm that I met with Mr. Freedman together with Lisa Osborne on September 3, 1999, at which time Mr. Freedman reviewed and signed the Treatment Plan.
I affirm that I cannot now certify with certainty that Mr. Freedman suffers from paranoid schizophrenia; and that Mr. Freedman's current diagnosis, as stated in his current Treatment Plan, reflects a change in the diagnosis I reported to the D.C. Board of Medicine in February 1999, eight months ago.
I understand that the diagnosis paranoid schizophrenia is considered a contraindication for antidepressant medication administered singly, not in combination with other drugs.
9. I affirm that Mr. Freedman continues to hold a body of beliefs, including the belief that he is under surveillance by his former employer as well as the President of the United States. I affirm that these beliefs are genuine and long-standing, but that, consistent with Mr. Freedman's current Treatment Plan, these beliefs do not support the diagnosis paranoid schizophrenia or any psychotic mental illness.
I affirm that I am aware of a letter dated July 31, 1999 that Mr. Freedman forwarded to Robert S. Bennett, Esq., the president's attorney, that evidences the genuine and long-standing nature of Mr. Freedman's beliefs.
10. I offer no opinion as to whether antidepressant medication, which I now recommend, might affect Mr. Freedman's suitability for employment per SSA rules.
I recommend antidepressant medication for Mr. Freedman for the symptom of chronic low-grade depression only.
11. I affirm that I am aware that Mr. Freedman's former employer, the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, terminated Mr. Freedman's employment in October 1991 because of concerns about Mr. Freedman's mental health and stability, including the potential for violence. I am aware that the firm's termination decision was made in consultation with a psychiatrist, Gertrude R. Ticho, M.D. I am further aware that the employer's stated reasons for the termination were deemed genuine by the District of Columbia Department of Human Rights and Minority Business Development, as affirmed by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, Freedman v. D.C. Dept. Human Rights, D.C. no. 96-CV-961.
(notary's signature and stamp)
__________________________________
ALBERT H. TAUB, M.D. (date)
PATIENT CERTIFICATION
I, Gary Freedman, affirm that I have read the above informed consent statement, and that I understand the purposes for which Dr. Taub recommends that I take antidepressant medication to be administered singly, not in combination with other drugs.
__________________________________
GARY FREEDMAN (date)
I certify that I met with Dr. Taub on October 15, 1999; that Dr. Taub refused to sign the above statement; but that I agreed to take antidepressant medication (Paxil), relying on Dr. Taub's professional opinion that the above concerns are not valid contraindications for Paxil.
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Albert H. Taub, M.D.
Community Mental Health Center
3246 P Street, NW
Washington, DC 20007
(202) 282-2229
Dear Dr. Taub:
At my last consultation with Dr. Shaffer (October 6, 1999) we reviewed the issue of medication. Both Dr. Shaffer and I agreed that I might benefit from antidepressant medication. Dr. Shaffer stated that she did not believe that antipsychotic medication was indicated.
The enclosed statement reviews issues relating to my treatment history as those issues pertain to the prescription of antidepressant medication administered singly.
As you know, paranoid schizophrenia is considered a contraindication for antidepressant medication administered singly, not in combination with other drugs.
The enclosed statement raises ethical and legal questions about inconsistencies in my treatment at the P Street Clinic: specifically, the appearance that you offered a disingenuous and self-serving clinical assessment of me to the D.C. Medical Board (Dx: paranoid schizophrenia; Rx: Zyprexa) simply to evade further scrutiny by the Board.
There is a further concern that your previous (self-serving) clinical assessments and treatment recommendations now preclude your prescribing antidepressant medication, the appropriate medication from which I might derive genuine benefit.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
Statement of Albert H. Taub, M.D., Made in Contemplation of Medical Prescription
INFORMED CONSENT
I, Albert H. Taub, M.D., a physician licensed to practice in the District of Columbia, and an employee of the Government of the District of Columbia (Commission on Mental Health Services [CMHS]), make the following statement in contemplation of prescribing antidepressant medication to my patient, Gary Freedman, CMHS patient no. 230923.
Mr. Freedman has been determined by the U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) to have been continuously disabled since October 29, 1991, the date of his job termination by a local law firm, where Mr. Freedman had been employed as a paralegal.
During the period September 1992 to June 1996 Mr. Freedman underwent out-patient psychiatric treatment at the George Washington University Medical Center Department of Psychiatry. Mr. Freedman was admitted to the CMHS in mid-year 1996, where he currently receives weekly psychotherapy with staff psychologist Nancy Schaffer, Ph.D. Mr. Freedman consults with me approximately once per month for the purpose of assessing his overall status as well as the indications for medical therapy.
On the basis of my consultations with Mr. Freedman, as well as the recommendations of his current psychotherapist, I believe that Mr. Freedman might derive limited benefit from a course of therapy on antidepressant medication (Paxil), for the symptom chronic low-grade depression or dysthymia.
I affirm that my current medical recommendation is appropriate, notwithstanding the following facts relating to Mr. Freedman's psychiatric treatment history and past employment difficulties.
1. I understand that the George Washington University Medical Center Department of Psychiatry (GW) diagnosed Mr. Freedman as suffering from bi-polar disorder (rule out: schizoaffective disorder) in September 1992, for which Mr. Freedman was prescribed lithium by his treating psychiatrist Suzanne M. Pitts, M.D., for an approximate two-week period in February 1993.
I understand that Mr. Freedman declined to take Haldol, a neuroleptic that was recommended by Dr. Pitts, in August 1993.
I offer no opinion as to the appropriateness of Mr. Freedman's psychiatric treatment in the period prior to his admission by the CMHS, in mid-year 1996.
I understand that Mr. Freedman's previous diagnoses (bi-polar disorder and r/o schizoaffective disorder) are considered contraindications for antidepressant medication administered singly, not in combination with other drugs.
2. I affirm that Mr. Freedman underwent comprehensive psychological testing at GW in May 1994. The testing was administered by a psychology intern (Yu-Ling Han) under the supervision of GW staff psychologist William Fabian, Ph.D. The bill for the testing, prepared by Dr. Fabian, states the diagnosis delusional (paranoid) disorder.
I offer no opinion as to the appropriateness of any psychiatric diagnoses assigned to Mr. Freedman in the period prior to his admission by the CMHS, in mid-year 1996.
3. I affirm that in February 1996 Mr. Freedman's treating psychiatrist at GW, Dimitrios Georgopoulos, M.D., diagnosed Mr. Freedman as suffering from paranoid schizophrenia, but that Mr. Freedman declined to take the (unspecified) neuroleptic recommended by Dr. Georgopoulos. See Letter dated February 14, 1996 from Dr. Georgopoulos to Mr. Freedman.
I offer no opinion as to the appropriateness of Mr. Freedman's psychiatric treatment in the period prior to his admission by the CMHS, in mid-year 1996.
I understand that Mr. Freedman's previous diagnosis (paranoid schizophrenia) is considered a contraindication for antidepressant medication administered singly, not in combination with other drugs.
4. I affirm that the U.S. Social Security Administration re-certified Mr. Freedman's disability claim in mid-year 1997 on the basis of a written clinical assessment provided to the agency by Mr. Freedman's treating psychiatrist at CMHS, Dr. Singh.
5. I affirm that I am aware that Mr. Freedman forwarded a letter dated January 24, 1998 to Dr. Singh (and copied to the Office of Independent Counsel, Kenneth W. Starr, Esq.) asserting that Mr. Freedman had been informed by his CMHS treating psychiatrist, Dr. Singh, on January 19, 1998, that it was the opinion of Dr. Singh as well as attending physician Steven D. Quint, M.D., that Mr. Freedman did not suffer from paranoid schizophrenia or any illness for which medication is indicated.
I offer no opinion as to the truth of the matters asserted in the said letter.
6. I affirm that I became Mr. Freedman's treating psychiatrist in early August 1998, and that shortly thereafter I recommended that Mr. Freedman take the neuroleptic, Zyprexa. Mr. Freedman declined to take the medication as I recommended.
7. I affirm that I advised the District of Columbia Board of Medicine (James R. Granger, Jr.) in writing, in response to a complaint filed by Mr. Freedman, that Mr. Freedman suffered from paranoid schizophrenia, an illness of long-standing duration, for which I had recommended a neuroleptic, which Mr. Freedman refused to take. See Letter dated February 22, 1999 from Albert H. Taub, M.D. to the D.C. Board of Medicine (James R. Granger, Jr.) ("In view of Mr. Freedman's long record of mental illness (paranoid schizophrenia) I recommended antipsychotic medication which he refused . . . .")
I understand that the diagnosis paranoid schizophrenia is considered a contraindication for antidepressant medication administered singly, not in combination with other drugs.
8. I affirm that Lisa Osborne, Mr. Freedman's CMHS psychotherapist (July 31, 1998 to September 3, 1999), prepared a Treatment Plan, per CMHS protocol, dated August 1999; the Treatment Plan, which I approved, states Mr. Freedman's current diagnosis as: Axis 1 -- rule out ("r/o") paranoid schizophrenia, r/o delusional (paranoid) disorder; Axis 2 -- narcissistic personality disorder. I affirm that I met with Mr. Freedman together with Lisa Osborne on September 3, 1999, at which time Mr. Freedman reviewed and signed the Treatment Plan.
I affirm that I cannot now certify with certainty that Mr. Freedman suffers from paranoid schizophrenia; and that Mr. Freedman's current diagnosis, as stated in his current Treatment Plan, reflects a change in the diagnosis I reported to the D.C. Board of Medicine in February 1999, eight months ago.
I understand that the diagnosis paranoid schizophrenia is considered a contraindication for antidepressant medication administered singly, not in combination with other drugs.
9. I affirm that Mr. Freedman continues to hold a body of beliefs, including the belief that he is under surveillance by his former employer as well as the President of the United States. I affirm that these beliefs are genuine and long-standing, but that, consistent with Mr. Freedman's current Treatment Plan, these beliefs do not support the diagnosis paranoid schizophrenia or any psychotic mental illness.
I affirm that I am aware of a letter dated July 31, 1999 that Mr. Freedman forwarded to Robert S. Bennett, Esq., the president's attorney, that evidences the genuine and long-standing nature of Mr. Freedman's beliefs.
10. I offer no opinion as to whether antidepressant medication, which I now recommend, might affect Mr. Freedman's suitability for employment per SSA rules.
I recommend antidepressant medication for Mr. Freedman for the symptom of chronic low-grade depression only.
11. I affirm that I am aware that Mr. Freedman's former employer, the Washington, D.C. office of the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, terminated Mr. Freedman's employment in October 1991 because of concerns about Mr. Freedman's mental health and stability, including the potential for violence. I am aware that the firm's termination decision was made in consultation with a psychiatrist, Gertrude R. Ticho, M.D. I am further aware that the employer's stated reasons for the termination were deemed genuine by the District of Columbia Department of Human Rights and Minority Business Development, as affirmed by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals, Freedman v. D.C. Dept. Human Rights, D.C. no. 96-CV-961.
(notary's signature and stamp)
__________________________________
ALBERT H. TAUB, M.D. (date)
PATIENT CERTIFICATION
I, Gary Freedman, affirm that I have read the above informed consent statement, and that I understand the purposes for which Dr. Taub recommends that I take antidepressant medication to be administered singly, not in combination with other drugs.
__________________________________
GARY FREEDMAN (date)
I certify that I met with Dr. Taub on October 15, 1999; that Dr. Taub refused to sign the above statement; but that I agreed to take antidepressant medication (Paxil), relying on Dr. Taub's professional opinion that the above concerns are not valid contraindications for Paxil.
Psychological Profile: Brother-in-Law
February 24, 1997
3801 Connecticut Ave., NW #136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Dr. Singh
Community Mental Health Center
Washington, DC 20007
Dear Dr. Singh:
At the last few consultations I offered several observations about my brother-in-law, and I attempted to place him within the context of my family dynamic. This letter is an elaboration and continuation of those comments. This letter attempts, in a systematic fashion, to offer a collection of anecdotes about my brother-in-law, from which a psychological pattern, structure, or profile, of him emerges.
It is important to understand aspects of my brother-in-law's psychology to understand more fully my own psychological development: how he may have made use of my normal developmental needs, my identity, my place in the nuclear configuration, and the psychological dynamics of my family to consolidate and support his own projective needs, narcissistic integrity, and identity; but, in so doing, how he may have corrupted or undermined environmental sources of ego strength that were essential for my own identity formation.
It is well to recognize--with respect to my identity formation--that my brother-in-law arrived on the scene in February 1965 when I was 11 years old 1/, a sixth grade student at a pre-adolescent stage of still "accruing ego identity." "[F]or," as Erikson writes, "it is of great relevance to the young individual's identity formation that he be responded to, and be given function and status as a person whose gradual growth and transformation make sense to those who begin to make sense to him. It has not been sufficiently recognized in psychoanalysis that such recognition provides an entirely indispensable support to the ego in the specific tasks of adolescing, which are: to maintain the most important ego defenses against the vastly growing intensity of impulses (now invested in a matured genital apparatus and a powerful muscle system); to learn to consolidate the most important 'conflict-free' achievements in line with work opportunities; and to resynthesize all childhood identifications in some unique way, and yet in concordance with the roles offered by some wider section of society--be that section the neighborhood block, an anticipated occupational field, an association of kindred minds, [etc.]." Erikson, E.H. Identity and the Life Cycle at 120 (1959; reprint, New York: W.W. Norton, 1980).
In the exposition that follows I refer to my brother-in-law as the "subject," to myself as the "patient," and to my sister as "the patient's sister."
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1/ At that time I had two close (male) friends with whom I routinely socialized. I can recall an incident from the following year, the summer of 1966, when I was 12 years old. I told my sister that I was depressed all the time and that I saw no way out but to commit suicide. I had no insight into the source of my distress. It is interesting that my niece, the younger daughter of my sister and brother-in-law, entered psychoanalysis at age 12, in 1994. At that time she reported to me: "They treat me like I'm a monster child. I'm not a monster child. I'm never happy. I'm only happy when I ride my horses."
In her own nuclear configuration, this niece was the youngest daughter in a home in which all the other parties (mother, father, and older sister) were either older siblings or only child. In my nuclear configuration, my sister was the only individual who had the experience of being the oldest child (and, for the first six years of her life, an only child).
Anecdotes and Theoretical Observations:
The subject on occasion commented to the patient's sister that the patient was an "Indian giver." The subject would comment about the patient, "When he gives you something, he will later ask for it back."
It is interesting to observe that in later years the subject's livelihood was based on his playing, at least symbolically, the role of "Indian giver." Subject owned a second-mortgage business, which made loans to mortgage holders to be repaid (with interest) in due course to the subject.
Thus, the subject's conscious sense of self-esteem and masculinity (his livelihood and his success in the business world) was based on a dynamic that carried an element of shame for the subject: the act of "Indian giving." The subject worked hard at a lawful operation (the loan business) precisely, perhaps, because he was able to view (at some level) his conduct as, in some way, illicit.
The subject's unacknowledged perception of his business enterprise as in some way illicit may have allowed him to preserve his sense of masculinity by working hard in a lawful enterprise despite a morality that was based on a pre-conventional superego development that dictated that "only suckers work hard." Subject may have warded off the irrational shame of his conduct (making loans and taking the money back) by means of projection ("Your brother [the patient] is an Indian giver") and by discharge into psychosomatic distress (chronic gastrointestinal disturbance). Thus, the subject was able to maintain his narcissistic integrity by projecting an irrationally shame-endowed aspect of his conduct onto the patient.
It may well be that a central conflict for the subject was that his sense of masculine identity was inextricably linked to a need to engage in behaviors that at some level he also viewed as--and needed to view as--shameful, or as transgressions that involved the evasion of authority. He may have needed to engage in certain types of behaviors (typically involving, or capable of being perceived as, "con jobs") to preserve his sense of masculinity (and ward off castration anxiety), but also needed objects on whom he could project the shame that necessarily accompanied his actual illicit behaviors or that accompanied behaviors he irrationally needed to construe as illicit. And it seems plausible that his chronic psychosomatic distress was bound up with this conflict.
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Freud has described a derivative of, or form of resolution of, the Oedipus conflict that he termed "the injured third-party complex." In this structure, the male--as a condition of loving--needs to deprive, or believe that he is depriving, another male of a love object.
I will begin here with a description of [a] type of object-choice--which occurs in men--since it is characterized by a number of 'necessary conditions for loving' whose combination is unintelligible, and indeed bewildering, and since it admits of a simple explanation on psycho-analytic lines. . . .
The first of these preconditions for loving can be described as positively specific: wherever it is found, the presence of the other characteristics of this type may be looked for. It may be termed the precondition that there should be 'an injured third party'; it stipulates that the person in question shall never choose as his love-object a woman who is disengaged--that is, an unmarried girl or an unattached married woman--but only one to whom another man can claim right of possession as her husband, fiance or friend [or brother]. In some cases this precondition proves so cogent that a woman can be ignored, or even rejected, so long as she does not belong to any man, but becomes the object of passionate feelings immediately she comes into one of these relationships with another man. . . .
[This] precondition provides an opportunity for gratifying impulses of rivalry and hostility directed at the man from whom the loved woman is wrested[.] Freud, S. "A Special Type of Choice of Object Made By Men." In: The Freud Reader at 388, Peter Gay, ed. (1910; reprint, New York: W.W. Norton, 1989).
It is theoretically conceivable that in the injured third-party complex, erotic investment (and sense of heterosexual self-esteem) may be linked to feelings of shame. It may well be that a central sexual conflict for the subject was that his sense of masculine identity (heterosexual adjustment) was inextricably linked to a need to engage in a behavior that at some level he also viewed as--and needed to view as--shameful: namely, the act of depriving, or irrationally imagining that he was depriving, another male of a love object. The subject may have needed a type of erotic investment that allowed him to imagine, at some level, that he was depriving another male of a sexual object, but also needed objects on whom he could project the shame that necessarily accompanied his actual illicit behaviors or that accompanied behaviors he irrationally needed to construe as illicit. Thus, the subject may have required, as incidental to his injured third-party complex, an object on whom he could project homosexual anxiety in order to preserve narcissistic integrity: "Your brother is a homosexual who wants to deprive his father of a wife." In such a case, paradoxically, a seemingly good heterosexual adjustment would not lessen the subject's homosexual anxiety (and consequent need for projection), but would actually heighten homosexual anxiety and the need for projection: heterosexual investment would, in such a case, always carry with it the shame that one was engaging in a continuing Oedipal crime.
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It may have been that for the subject one aspect of the mother imago was the view that the mother was a vulnerable and innocent dupe, a figure incapable of fending off the parasitical dependency needs of a son. One might speculate that the subject held the following (unacknowledged) viewpoint: "a son can dupe a mother, and to do so is no sign of strength, and indeed, is a sign of one's lack of masculinity."
It may have been that with respect to the father imago subject viewed the father as a punitive authority "who should, and does, know better" than to give in to the son's demands for gratification of his parasitical dependency needs (and erotic desires). One might speculate that subject viewed the ability to dupe the father in the Oedipal situation as a sign, or marker, of one's own masculinity, a view that might be encapsulated in the phrase "you have to be a smart fellow to dupe a father." Possible morality based on the injured third-party complex: seducing the mother is a marker of masculine daring and courage if it involves a clever dupe of the all-powerful, fear-inspiring father. In such a case, heterosexual investment would be ambivalent, involving, as it necessarily would, a perverse self-esteem derived from evading Oedipal punishment, but simultaneous shame (discharged projectively) at having seduced the mother.
The following anecdote from August 1968 is noteworthy. The subject (age 21) and sister (age 20), not yet married, wanted to spend a week at Virginia Beach with friends (a married couple). The patient's mother was strongly opposed to the trip. Despite the repeated solicitations of the subject, the patient's mother continued to refuse her permission for the trip. The subject then said to the patient (age 14): "Can't you talk to your mother? Can't you get your mother to let your sister and me go to Virginia Beach?" Here, the subject assumes that the patient has some special power over his mother, and subject sees nothing wrong with exploiting that power for the subject's own purposes. Again: The subject views the mother as a vulnerable and innocent dupe, a figure incapable of fending off the parasitical dependency needs of the son ("a son can dupe a mother, and to do so is no sign of strength, and indeed, is a sign of one's lack of masculinity").
It is interesting that just a few months later, in December 1968, the patient's mother mentioned that the patient and a male friend were planning to take a one-day sight-seeing trip to New York City. The subject looked horrified. Subject probably said something along the following lines to the sister: "I can't believe your mother is giving your brother money to go to New York." [It is significant that on another occasion the patient overheard a telephone conversation in which the subject said to the sister concerning the patient's interaction with his male friend: "What do they do when they are alone together?" Note the symmetry between the subject's homosexual innuendo as it related to the patient's interaction with a male friend, and the subject's possible view of the sister as a mother-substitute, interaction with whom satisfied the subject's need to believe that he was engaging in an Oedipal crime (the "injured third-party complex")].
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Issues of Parasitism and Dependency Vis-a-Vis the Mother:
During the period late 1965, when the patient was nearing 12 years of age, until 1970 when the patient was 16 years old, the patient's mother from time to time purchased phonograph recordings of classical music for the patient. The subject consistently viewed these purchases by the mother as signs of the patient's parasitical dependency on the mother. It is noted, incidentally, that in October 1969 (when the patient was 15 years old), the patient's father purchased for the patient a three-record album (a recording of the Wagner opera Das Rheingold). Subject's response was revealing; he stated to the patient's sister, "I can't believe your father bought him that." Thus, when the mother catered to the patient's needs, subject depicted the patient as parasitically dependent ("the mother is a vulnerable and innocent dupe, a figure incapable of fending off the parasitical dependency needs of a son--a son can dupe a mother, and to do so is no sign of strength, and indeed, it is a sign of one's lack of masculinity.") Yet when the father catered to the son's needs, it was the father who tended to be debased by the subject ("the father is a punitive authority who should, and does, know better than to give in to the son's demands for gratification of his parasitical dependency needs (and erotic desires)").
In about August 1966, patient's mother began to purchase for patient (then age 12) a series of books, sold weekly at the supermarket: a 16-volume set of books on world history, from ancient times to the present. When the subject saw that the mother was purchasing the entire set for the patient, subject noted to the sister disparagingly: "I told you she would buy him [the patient] the entire set." Again, the mother is depicted as weak and unable to fend off the demands of the child, a sign (in the subject's mind) of the child's parasitism and dependency (and lack of masculinity).
It is significant, therefore, that in his early twenties, subject earned extra cash by selling serialized books: first, correspondence law courses (in 1971), then, later, the World Book Encyclopaedia (1973). Subject's sense of masculinity was enhanced by his act of selling books to people, who, as purchasers, he must have viewed as idiots and dupes (dependent "suckers")--that is, people who were susceptible to being victimized by con jobs. Once again we see subject's sense of masculinity being derived by actions that require placing others in a position the subject viewed in debased fashion as parasitical, dependent, suckers.
When the patient's mother purchased phonograph records and books for the patient, subject probably identified with the seller (whose identity as an idealized con artist may have been enhanced by the subject's anti-intellectualism--"He must be a damn good con artist to be able to sell such worthless trash as serialized books and classical music records") and projected shame onto the gullible ("sucker") purchaser. Subject may have derived a sense of masculinity from either position: projecting shame onto the "gullible" purchaser or acting as a con artist who himself "cheats" the purchaser. I suspect that this has some erotic counterpart: that the subject's erotic investments also involved some sense of conning of the love object 2/ and projection of shame, though the precise dynamics are not clear.
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2/ In the movie The Godfather the young mafioso Michael Corleone falsely assures his wife, Kate, that he is not involved in his family's "business"--that his business activities are strictly legitimate. One might interpret Michael's marriage to a culturally-refined, "innocent American girl" as necessary to provide a deceptively reality-adequate outlet for the husband's unconscious erotic need to engage in a continuing fraud on the love object. One might also speculate that the patient's sister's reported conscious identification with the character Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams' Streetcar Named Desire may have served as a counterpart to her husband's possible unconscious need to believe he was engaged in a continuing deception of a naive innocent.
This same dynamic was repeated in other areas as well. Thus, during the patient's childhood (and even beyond) the subject would make disparaging and teasing remarks about clothing the patient's mother had bought for him ("Oh, is that a new banlon shirt?" "Did your mother buy you a new sweater? Another sweater?" A winter overcoat that the patient's mother purchased for the patient at age 15 (and which the patient continued to wear until about age 22) was the subject of continuing disparaging remarks: "Look at that coat. His mother buys him a nice coat and he doesn't even take care of it."). It is possibly significant that in the early 1970's, when the subject was in his early 20's, he got a part-time job in a men's clothing store to earn extra cash.
Until his mid-30's the subject worked as an elementary school teacher. It is interesting to observe, incidentally, that the teacher plays a role in which he repeatedly takes back (in the testing situation and in classroom interaction) what he initially gives the students (namely, knowledge): again, an "Indian giver" situation. Also, the subject, once again, may have felt comfortable as a purveyor of that which he disparaged as a consumer, that is, the knowledge imbibed by the student (a passive "sucker").
With respect to superego development, the above-elaborated dynamic may relate in some way to what Lawrence Kohlberg refers to as an "instrumental-hedonistic" superego (pre-conventional superego), in which the individual gives to others in contemplation of what he will, in turn, receive: a morality based on "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" or, as encapsulated in the phrase, "You owe me, buddy." Thus, the individual at an "instrumental-hedonistic" level of superego development may derive the following psychological satisfaction from teaching: "I gave you some knowledge, now you give it back to me." The individual at an "instrumental-hedonistic" level of superego development may derive the following psychological satisfaction from a loan business: "I gave you a loan, now you give it back"--quite literally, "you owe me, buddy."
[It is noted in passing that in the marital relationship, the individual at an "instrumental-hedonistic" level of superego development might in some way communicate to his wife that the purchase of a house is a "gift" that obliges the wife to reciprocate with increased devotion. In such a case, if an outsider were to criticize the husband for any reason, the wife's response that the critic is jealous of the husband ("He's just jealous of our new house") may be a defense against the reality that the house serves in part as a bribe aimed at silencing criticism of the husband.]
[Note that some of the patient's harassers in the work environment may also have been motivated by an "instrumental-hedonistic" superego: "If you harass him like I tell you to, I'll see to it that you get that transfer or promotion or office that you want."]
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Subject's Sense of Masculinity Is Paradoxically Heightened By Dependency and Parasitism Where Conjoined With the "Con Job":
In mid-November 1977 subject had himself admitted to a hospital following a car accident, in order to fabricate evidence for a fraudulent lawsuit against the other driver. Subject had not been injured in any way in the accident. Subject was hospitalized for a few days.
In this situation the subject placed himself in the role of a parasitical and dependent individual and, paradoxically, may have derived a sense of masculinity from this behavior since the parasitism was itself bound up with a "con job." The subject's shame could be projected onto the patient, who, only one week earlier had been hospitalized following a serious suicide attempt: "Your brother is weak, dependent, and parasitical."
The subject's morality was such that it permitted him to behave in a parasitical and dependent (mother-fixated) manner so long as it was linked to conning behavior. Again, there may be an Oedipal parallel, as in the injured third-party complex: one is permitted to seduce the mother so long as the seduction involves the clever dupe of the father (or possibly the love object herself). But, as noted above, such an Oedipal resolution preserves narcissistic integrity at the expense of ever-present shame that must be discharged by projection or other means (such as psychosomatic distress).
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Codependent Feature of Sister's and Subject's Superego Development:
The subject and sister began to date when both parties were aged 17 (high school seniors). It is plausible that final consolidation of the superego of the respective parties occurred in conjunction with the relationship, so that to a greater or lesser degree the respective superegos fused, resulting in a permanent codependent unit. To some extent the marriage between the subject and the patient's sister was more like a cult than a marriage, with the subject exercising a high degree of suggestibility on the patient's sister.
The couple's older child reported that she typically felt like an outsider vis-a-vis her parents' relationship, that her parents seemed to need only each other. The younger child entered three-session per week psychoanalysis at age 12. One assumes that the wife (the patient's sister) psychologically colluded with her husband (the subject), to the detriment of other parties, to maintain his narcissistic integrity, preserve his sense of masculinity and self-esteem, and ward off perceived threats and narcissistic injury. Because of the codependency, the sister would have perceived the need to maintain the subject's narcissistic integrity in order to preserve her own self-esteem. Any attack on the subject would have been perceived by the sister as an attack on herself. Also, the sister would have felt a need to actively join, acquiesce in, or refrain from criticizing, the subject's aggressive attacks on the patient; conversely, the sister may have engaged in shallow acts of solicitude toward the patient, at times, simply to express anger at the subject (the sister being aware that such solicitude aroused the subject's jealousy [sister: "I'm just calling to chat." patient: "So, why are you calling me at 10:30 at night just to chat." sister: "Well, Eddie just hollered at me."]).
The following anecdote provides just one example of the sister's collusion with the subject, aimed at preserving the subject's narcissistic integrity. In April 1969, a few weeks before the subject's marriage to the patient's sister, the family had arranged to go out together to rent formal wear for the wedding. The subject arrived at the house a little later than expected, and the patient's father chastised the subject. A few days later, the sister told the patient (then age 15) in private: "What did you think of the way Dad talked to Eddie? Eddie said to me: 'Your father is such a jerk. He is such a jerk!' He is a jerk! Don't you think Dad is a jerk?" Here, we see the subject's sensitivity to criticism, and the sister acting to preserve the subject's narcissistic integrity by devaluing the source of the presumed injury.
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In conclusion, we are able to see that the subject had three important sources of narcissistic integrity: Acting as, or imagining that he was acting as, the con artist who dupes an innocent party; or projecting shame onto persons who had been "conned" (passive "suckers"); or projecting shame onto the child who had "taken advantage of" the mother's inability to fend off the child's "parasitical" needs. In the subject's mind, the child who receives the salutary, unqualified, and unfettered love of the mother is necessarily a dependent parasite or homosexual. (The relationship to "instrumental-hedonistic" superego development is clear: the mother who gives her unqualified love freely to the child is the mother who is not looking for "payback time.")
These needs appear to be a derivative of the Oedipal situation in that they are identical to the dynamics of the injured third-party complex in which the individual needs to imagine that he is denying another male of a love object, that is, that he is committing a continuing Oedipal crime.
Paradoxically, and devastatingly for the subject, intense feelings of shame (and an unavoidable need to discharge that shame by means of projection and psychosomatic distress) were a necessary incident to the preservation of the subject's narcissistic integrity and his sense of heterosexual adjustment.
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Comparison of Subject's Injured Third-Party Complex with an Aspect of the Patient's Psychology:
The above discussion attempts to show that for the subject, every need gratification had to be supported by the belief, or illusion, that it was forbidden: that the need gratification had to involve at least the subjective illusion of a transgression and evasion of authority.
This dynamic has a parallel with an important aspect of the patient's psychology. The patient in his autobiographical sketch proposes a dynamic, presumably operative in himself, in which every need gratification has to involve some type of pain or punishment. Footnote 1 of the autobiographical study (a copy of which is attached) describes a possible body ego prototype for this dynamic, a prototype that assumes an unavoidable and internal source of frustration of every attempt at oral gratification. The patient has proposed elsewhere that this model may serve as a prototype of a wide range of subsidiary issues: intense unconscious fear of starvation (defended against by means of, or sublimated in, verbal productions); fear of loss of erective potency (the erect penis becomes flaccid by, symbolically, being "frustrated" for blood, i.e., "food"); and a pathologically hyper-developed superego that inhibits instinctual impulses (but also strengthens reality testing) in that it requires (or allows) the individual to forego the gratification needs of the pleasure ego, etc.
The two models merit further comparison.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
1. plans to get phoney (mail-order) masters degree to qualify for higher salary grade as teacher:
[Although subject did not carry through with plan, the scheme is analyzable as a wish or fantasy, or imagined way of manipulating reality.]
superego functioning: (mendacity); "I will manipulate the environment to comply in mendacious fashion with other peoples values (which have no meaning for me) in order to get the reward (money) I crave.
possibly overdetermined in sexual functioning: Pleases wife (satisfies her needs) only to the extent necessary to ensure that she continues to "put out" for him. (see cow metaphor, below)
narcissistic element: the use of a hollow image, or the creation of the appearance of reality, in order to gain a utilitarian advantage (money, love). Note the specific aim of the narcissism is a utilitarian reward, as distinguished from the person who gives the outward appearance of attaining an intellectual milestone with the ultimate aim of impressing others as having intellectual abilities.
possibly more than incidental relationship, or facial parallel, to my getting a (genuine) law degree which I render meaningless by failing to practice law.
note relationship with fraudulent lawsuit: Took on the identity of the sick person to obtain financial reward; here, takes on mere "identity" of educated person to obtain financial reward.
in both cases, he engages in a parody: the parody of a sick person, the parody of an educated person. (Possible sadistic mockery of the mother and the son's perceived image of the mother's desire for the son--to be dependent and intellectual. Note that he ridiculed both dependency and intellectual pursuits.).
2. an aspect of father's personality that was discharged in his work that may have had an effect on son's psychological development.
Father was self-employed; he had a car parts business. Taking apart cars (junkers) and selling the parts. Relationship to psychopaths (fantasies of dismemberment). See Lowen, A. Narcissism: Denial of the True Self. pp. 22-23. (Citing Alan Harrington, Psychopaths).
4. Mendacious affirmation of superego values with the intent to gain approval of authorties
a. 1969: saying to my aunt--"We saw the movie 'Boys in the Band.' The language was shocking. It was shocking to hear language like that.
mid-1980's Suzanne: "You should hear the way my dad talks. You should hear the dirty words my dad uses!"
b. early 1970's: saying to aunt at family dinner (Thanksgiving?) It's just terrible all the food that gets wasted in the world. So much food just gets thrown away.
late 1960's: Food fight with sister in kitchen of parents house--tomatoes and whipped cream all over the kitchen.
threw food in living room at my sister with father present. (also indicates lack of impulse control even with father present).
5. Fantasy Life: Identified my parents with the parents in the TV show "All in the Family."
Unacknowledged identification with fact that the son-in-law of the show ("Mike") was a parasitically-dependent person who lived with, and "off-of," his in-laws. SEXUAL ISSUES: wife as both sexual object (wife) and symbolic sister with whom the son-in-law lived in the (figurative) parents' home (incest boundary issues).
Note the fact that the wife was an only child, so that there was no symbolic representation of me. In fantasy brother-in-law dispensed with me; I was for him no more than a shadow object, a vehicle for the projection of the bad-self (parasitical, dependent, with powerful incest wishes), which, in rationalized form, was in fact himself as represented by the son-in-law on the show.
Useful to compare with my own fantasy life, specifically, my identification with the character Siegmund in Wagner's opera Die Walkure.
6. Alexithymic qualities: impoverished fantasy life (devalued fantasy). For him, I lived in a "fantasy world," a pejorative valuation. Did not recall dreams. Probably related to psychosomatic symptoms: unable to process distressing affect at a level of concious thought, but rather only at a somatic level.
7. Shengold material on victims of abuse and their uncanny ability to find spouses with similar backgrounds.
8. inference re: relationship with mother. Analogy. A farmer with a milk-cow who feeds the cow simply to keep the milk flowing. The interest is not empathy with the cow or the cow's needs per se, but simply to keep the animal happy so that it will produce the desired reward to the farmer. Also, this is a system of reciprocal rewards rather than a relationship of general give-and-take: a relationship of wide-ranging mutuality and wide-ranging needs gratification.
The farmer will assume (in mendacious fashion) whatever posture or identity the cow requires (such as a "masters degree") if this is what it will take to make the cow give milk. Object-relations characterized by mendacious pseudo-empathy and feeling masquerading as true empathy, but which is fundamentally self-oriented and goal-directed: forced into a chronic state of pseudo-identity, pseudo-feeling, or outright deception. (Constant refrain: "Eddie did such-and-such, but he didn't tell his mother. She overreacts.") Possible source of brother-in-law's negative valuation of me: "He bites the hand that feeds him." In reality, I fail to put on a masquerade to keep the milk flowing.
Object relations became complex and intertwined attempts at keeping the milk flowing from various sources (psychological equivalent of a "pyramid scheme"). Subject pleased wife to keep milk flowing from wife; proceeded to use milk from wife (the appearance of a happy wife and ideal marriage) to feed mother, to keep milk flowing from mother. Likely source of brother-in-law's negative valuation of me: "He was dating her only to please his mother." Note that in a loan business (at its most simplistic level), you take interest payments from one source to make a loan to a second party, who, in turn, repays with interest, which, in turn, is loaned to a third party, and so on.
(Dynamic possibly reflected in childhood: subject pleased mother to keep milk flowing from uncle. Perhaps, also, mother pleased son to keep milk flowing from her own brother; brother (subject's uncle) pleased son to keep milk flowing from his sister. A real "pyramid scheme!")
Relationship to superego functioning: Quantity of milk produced by the cow is a direct and ultimate measure of one's goodness as a human being. "Would she be producing all this milk if I weren't a good farmer?" But the sense of goodness was superficial; the underlying shame at the means employed to get the cow to produce cannot be mitigated. In fact, the more milk the cow produces is also, at an unconscious level, perceived as a measure of the farmer's badness, or mendacity.
9. Where a person's narcissism is overdetermined--with that narcissism the source of success in the business world, but that same trend a source of aggression in the family--the victim who complains will always be faced with accusations of jealousy that will be difficult to overcome.. "He only says these things because he's jealous of so-and-so's success."
"There are successful psychopaths according to Alan Harrington, who made a study of these personalities--'brillinat, remorseless people with icy intelligence, incapable of love or guilt, with aggressive designs on the rest of the world.' Such an individual may be an able lawyer, executive, or politician. 'Instead of murdering others,' Harrington comments, this person 'might become a corporate raider and murder companies, firing people instead of killing them, and chopping up their functions, rather than their bodies." Ironically, the key to this kind of 'success' is the person's lack of feeling--which is the key to all narcissistic disturbances." Lowen at 23.
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Projection of homosexual anxiety from a person who:
1. Is afraid to join the army. Gets job as teacher to obtain military deferment.
2. But can't get a teaching job on his own and has his parents use family connections to get him a teaching job to keep him out of the army.
3. Can't get a job to support a family; has 60-year-old mother-in-law wallpaper 3 rooms in house -- can't afford to hire a paperhanger. "We were going to have her wallpaper our bedroom, but she died."
4. Can't get a job to support a family; files fraudulent law suit to "earn" extra money.
5. Goes to Florida with friends in 1965; returns with bleached hair.
6. Goes to Florida with family in 1982--has me call in sick for him every morning. But can't ask me to do him the favor. Has sister ask me to do it.
7. Has me (a former mental patient who attempted suicide two years earlier) to hand over ten thousand dollars just after my mother died. The mental patient's mother wanted her son to have the money because of his difficulties. Sister goes around saying "We wanted my mother to have a funeral just like her mother's. That was her wish, we wanted to honor her wishes." What about her wish that I keep the money that was intended for me?
Yes. I am a parasitical homosexual.
3801 Connecticut Ave., NW #136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Dr. Singh
Community Mental Health Center
Washington, DC 20007
Dear Dr. Singh:
At the last few consultations I offered several observations about my brother-in-law, and I attempted to place him within the context of my family dynamic. This letter is an elaboration and continuation of those comments. This letter attempts, in a systematic fashion, to offer a collection of anecdotes about my brother-in-law, from which a psychological pattern, structure, or profile, of him emerges.
It is important to understand aspects of my brother-in-law's psychology to understand more fully my own psychological development: how he may have made use of my normal developmental needs, my identity, my place in the nuclear configuration, and the psychological dynamics of my family to consolidate and support his own projective needs, narcissistic integrity, and identity; but, in so doing, how he may have corrupted or undermined environmental sources of ego strength that were essential for my own identity formation.
It is well to recognize--with respect to my identity formation--that my brother-in-law arrived on the scene in February 1965 when I was 11 years old 1/, a sixth grade student at a pre-adolescent stage of still "accruing ego identity." "[F]or," as Erikson writes, "it is of great relevance to the young individual's identity formation that he be responded to, and be given function and status as a person whose gradual growth and transformation make sense to those who begin to make sense to him. It has not been sufficiently recognized in psychoanalysis that such recognition provides an entirely indispensable support to the ego in the specific tasks of adolescing, which are: to maintain the most important ego defenses against the vastly growing intensity of impulses (now invested in a matured genital apparatus and a powerful muscle system); to learn to consolidate the most important 'conflict-free' achievements in line with work opportunities; and to resynthesize all childhood identifications in some unique way, and yet in concordance with the roles offered by some wider section of society--be that section the neighborhood block, an anticipated occupational field, an association of kindred minds, [etc.]." Erikson, E.H. Identity and the Life Cycle at 120 (1959; reprint, New York: W.W. Norton, 1980).
In the exposition that follows I refer to my brother-in-law as the "subject," to myself as the "patient," and to my sister as "the patient's sister."
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1/ At that time I had two close (male) friends with whom I routinely socialized. I can recall an incident from the following year, the summer of 1966, when I was 12 years old. I told my sister that I was depressed all the time and that I saw no way out but to commit suicide. I had no insight into the source of my distress. It is interesting that my niece, the younger daughter of my sister and brother-in-law, entered psychoanalysis at age 12, in 1994. At that time she reported to me: "They treat me like I'm a monster child. I'm not a monster child. I'm never happy. I'm only happy when I ride my horses."
In her own nuclear configuration, this niece was the youngest daughter in a home in which all the other parties (mother, father, and older sister) were either older siblings or only child. In my nuclear configuration, my sister was the only individual who had the experience of being the oldest child (and, for the first six years of her life, an only child).
Anecdotes and Theoretical Observations:
The subject on occasion commented to the patient's sister that the patient was an "Indian giver." The subject would comment about the patient, "When he gives you something, he will later ask for it back."
It is interesting to observe that in later years the subject's livelihood was based on his playing, at least symbolically, the role of "Indian giver." Subject owned a second-mortgage business, which made loans to mortgage holders to be repaid (with interest) in due course to the subject.
Thus, the subject's conscious sense of self-esteem and masculinity (his livelihood and his success in the business world) was based on a dynamic that carried an element of shame for the subject: the act of "Indian giving." The subject worked hard at a lawful operation (the loan business) precisely, perhaps, because he was able to view (at some level) his conduct as, in some way, illicit.
The subject's unacknowledged perception of his business enterprise as in some way illicit may have allowed him to preserve his sense of masculinity by working hard in a lawful enterprise despite a morality that was based on a pre-conventional superego development that dictated that "only suckers work hard." Subject may have warded off the irrational shame of his conduct (making loans and taking the money back) by means of projection ("Your brother [the patient] is an Indian giver") and by discharge into psychosomatic distress (chronic gastrointestinal disturbance). Thus, the subject was able to maintain his narcissistic integrity by projecting an irrationally shame-endowed aspect of his conduct onto the patient.
It may well be that a central conflict for the subject was that his sense of masculine identity was inextricably linked to a need to engage in behaviors that at some level he also viewed as--and needed to view as--shameful, or as transgressions that involved the evasion of authority. He may have needed to engage in certain types of behaviors (typically involving, or capable of being perceived as, "con jobs") to preserve his sense of masculinity (and ward off castration anxiety), but also needed objects on whom he could project the shame that necessarily accompanied his actual illicit behaviors or that accompanied behaviors he irrationally needed to construe as illicit. And it seems plausible that his chronic psychosomatic distress was bound up with this conflict.
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Freud has described a derivative of, or form of resolution of, the Oedipus conflict that he termed "the injured third-party complex." In this structure, the male--as a condition of loving--needs to deprive, or believe that he is depriving, another male of a love object.
I will begin here with a description of [a] type of object-choice--which occurs in men--since it is characterized by a number of 'necessary conditions for loving' whose combination is unintelligible, and indeed bewildering, and since it admits of a simple explanation on psycho-analytic lines. . . .
The first of these preconditions for loving can be described as positively specific: wherever it is found, the presence of the other characteristics of this type may be looked for. It may be termed the precondition that there should be 'an injured third party'; it stipulates that the person in question shall never choose as his love-object a woman who is disengaged--that is, an unmarried girl or an unattached married woman--but only one to whom another man can claim right of possession as her husband, fiance or friend [or brother]. In some cases this precondition proves so cogent that a woman can be ignored, or even rejected, so long as she does not belong to any man, but becomes the object of passionate feelings immediately she comes into one of these relationships with another man. . . .
[This] precondition provides an opportunity for gratifying impulses of rivalry and hostility directed at the man from whom the loved woman is wrested[.] Freud, S. "A Special Type of Choice of Object Made By Men." In: The Freud Reader at 388, Peter Gay, ed. (1910; reprint, New York: W.W. Norton, 1989).
It is theoretically conceivable that in the injured third-party complex, erotic investment (and sense of heterosexual self-esteem) may be linked to feelings of shame. It may well be that a central sexual conflict for the subject was that his sense of masculine identity (heterosexual adjustment) was inextricably linked to a need to engage in a behavior that at some level he also viewed as--and needed to view as--shameful: namely, the act of depriving, or irrationally imagining that he was depriving, another male of a love object. The subject may have needed a type of erotic investment that allowed him to imagine, at some level, that he was depriving another male of a sexual object, but also needed objects on whom he could project the shame that necessarily accompanied his actual illicit behaviors or that accompanied behaviors he irrationally needed to construe as illicit. Thus, the subject may have required, as incidental to his injured third-party complex, an object on whom he could project homosexual anxiety in order to preserve narcissistic integrity: "Your brother is a homosexual who wants to deprive his father of a wife." In such a case, paradoxically, a seemingly good heterosexual adjustment would not lessen the subject's homosexual anxiety (and consequent need for projection), but would actually heighten homosexual anxiety and the need for projection: heterosexual investment would, in such a case, always carry with it the shame that one was engaging in a continuing Oedipal crime.
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It may have been that for the subject one aspect of the mother imago was the view that the mother was a vulnerable and innocent dupe, a figure incapable of fending off the parasitical dependency needs of a son. One might speculate that the subject held the following (unacknowledged) viewpoint: "a son can dupe a mother, and to do so is no sign of strength, and indeed, is a sign of one's lack of masculinity."
It may have been that with respect to the father imago subject viewed the father as a punitive authority "who should, and does, know better" than to give in to the son's demands for gratification of his parasitical dependency needs (and erotic desires). One might speculate that subject viewed the ability to dupe the father in the Oedipal situation as a sign, or marker, of one's own masculinity, a view that might be encapsulated in the phrase "you have to be a smart fellow to dupe a father." Possible morality based on the injured third-party complex: seducing the mother is a marker of masculine daring and courage if it involves a clever dupe of the all-powerful, fear-inspiring father. In such a case, heterosexual investment would be ambivalent, involving, as it necessarily would, a perverse self-esteem derived from evading Oedipal punishment, but simultaneous shame (discharged projectively) at having seduced the mother.
The following anecdote from August 1968 is noteworthy. The subject (age 21) and sister (age 20), not yet married, wanted to spend a week at Virginia Beach with friends (a married couple). The patient's mother was strongly opposed to the trip. Despite the repeated solicitations of the subject, the patient's mother continued to refuse her permission for the trip. The subject then said to the patient (age 14): "Can't you talk to your mother? Can't you get your mother to let your sister and me go to Virginia Beach?" Here, the subject assumes that the patient has some special power over his mother, and subject sees nothing wrong with exploiting that power for the subject's own purposes. Again: The subject views the mother as a vulnerable and innocent dupe, a figure incapable of fending off the parasitical dependency needs of the son ("a son can dupe a mother, and to do so is no sign of strength, and indeed, is a sign of one's lack of masculinity").
It is interesting that just a few months later, in December 1968, the patient's mother mentioned that the patient and a male friend were planning to take a one-day sight-seeing trip to New York City. The subject looked horrified. Subject probably said something along the following lines to the sister: "I can't believe your mother is giving your brother money to go to New York." [It is significant that on another occasion the patient overheard a telephone conversation in which the subject said to the sister concerning the patient's interaction with his male friend: "What do they do when they are alone together?" Note the symmetry between the subject's homosexual innuendo as it related to the patient's interaction with a male friend, and the subject's possible view of the sister as a mother-substitute, interaction with whom satisfied the subject's need to believe that he was engaging in an Oedipal crime (the "injured third-party complex")].
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Issues of Parasitism and Dependency Vis-a-Vis the Mother:
During the period late 1965, when the patient was nearing 12 years of age, until 1970 when the patient was 16 years old, the patient's mother from time to time purchased phonograph recordings of classical music for the patient. The subject consistently viewed these purchases by the mother as signs of the patient's parasitical dependency on the mother. It is noted, incidentally, that in October 1969 (when the patient was 15 years old), the patient's father purchased for the patient a three-record album (a recording of the Wagner opera Das Rheingold). Subject's response was revealing; he stated to the patient's sister, "I can't believe your father bought him that." Thus, when the mother catered to the patient's needs, subject depicted the patient as parasitically dependent ("the mother is a vulnerable and innocent dupe, a figure incapable of fending off the parasitical dependency needs of a son--a son can dupe a mother, and to do so is no sign of strength, and indeed, it is a sign of one's lack of masculinity.") Yet when the father catered to the son's needs, it was the father who tended to be debased by the subject ("the father is a punitive authority who should, and does, know better than to give in to the son's demands for gratification of his parasitical dependency needs (and erotic desires)").
In about August 1966, patient's mother began to purchase for patient (then age 12) a series of books, sold weekly at the supermarket: a 16-volume set of books on world history, from ancient times to the present. When the subject saw that the mother was purchasing the entire set for the patient, subject noted to the sister disparagingly: "I told you she would buy him [the patient] the entire set." Again, the mother is depicted as weak and unable to fend off the demands of the child, a sign (in the subject's mind) of the child's parasitism and dependency (and lack of masculinity).
It is significant, therefore, that in his early twenties, subject earned extra cash by selling serialized books: first, correspondence law courses (in 1971), then, later, the World Book Encyclopaedia (1973). Subject's sense of masculinity was enhanced by his act of selling books to people, who, as purchasers, he must have viewed as idiots and dupes (dependent "suckers")--that is, people who were susceptible to being victimized by con jobs. Once again we see subject's sense of masculinity being derived by actions that require placing others in a position the subject viewed in debased fashion as parasitical, dependent, suckers.
When the patient's mother purchased phonograph records and books for the patient, subject probably identified with the seller (whose identity as an idealized con artist may have been enhanced by the subject's anti-intellectualism--"He must be a damn good con artist to be able to sell such worthless trash as serialized books and classical music records") and projected shame onto the gullible ("sucker") purchaser. Subject may have derived a sense of masculinity from either position: projecting shame onto the "gullible" purchaser or acting as a con artist who himself "cheats" the purchaser. I suspect that this has some erotic counterpart: that the subject's erotic investments also involved some sense of conning of the love object 2/ and projection of shame, though the precise dynamics are not clear.
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2/ In the movie The Godfather the young mafioso Michael Corleone falsely assures his wife, Kate, that he is not involved in his family's "business"--that his business activities are strictly legitimate. One might interpret Michael's marriage to a culturally-refined, "innocent American girl" as necessary to provide a deceptively reality-adequate outlet for the husband's unconscious erotic need to engage in a continuing fraud on the love object. One might also speculate that the patient's sister's reported conscious identification with the character Blanche DuBois in Tennessee Williams' Streetcar Named Desire may have served as a counterpart to her husband's possible unconscious need to believe he was engaged in a continuing deception of a naive innocent.
This same dynamic was repeated in other areas as well. Thus, during the patient's childhood (and even beyond) the subject would make disparaging and teasing remarks about clothing the patient's mother had bought for him ("Oh, is that a new banlon shirt?" "Did your mother buy you a new sweater? Another sweater?" A winter overcoat that the patient's mother purchased for the patient at age 15 (and which the patient continued to wear until about age 22) was the subject of continuing disparaging remarks: "Look at that coat. His mother buys him a nice coat and he doesn't even take care of it."). It is possibly significant that in the early 1970's, when the subject was in his early 20's, he got a part-time job in a men's clothing store to earn extra cash.
Until his mid-30's the subject worked as an elementary school teacher. It is interesting to observe, incidentally, that the teacher plays a role in which he repeatedly takes back (in the testing situation and in classroom interaction) what he initially gives the students (namely, knowledge): again, an "Indian giver" situation. Also, the subject, once again, may have felt comfortable as a purveyor of that which he disparaged as a consumer, that is, the knowledge imbibed by the student (a passive "sucker").
With respect to superego development, the above-elaborated dynamic may relate in some way to what Lawrence Kohlberg refers to as an "instrumental-hedonistic" superego (pre-conventional superego), in which the individual gives to others in contemplation of what he will, in turn, receive: a morality based on "you scratch my back and I'll scratch yours" or, as encapsulated in the phrase, "You owe me, buddy." Thus, the individual at an "instrumental-hedonistic" level of superego development may derive the following psychological satisfaction from teaching: "I gave you some knowledge, now you give it back to me." The individual at an "instrumental-hedonistic" level of superego development may derive the following psychological satisfaction from a loan business: "I gave you a loan, now you give it back"--quite literally, "you owe me, buddy."
[It is noted in passing that in the marital relationship, the individual at an "instrumental-hedonistic" level of superego development might in some way communicate to his wife that the purchase of a house is a "gift" that obliges the wife to reciprocate with increased devotion. In such a case, if an outsider were to criticize the husband for any reason, the wife's response that the critic is jealous of the husband ("He's just jealous of our new house") may be a defense against the reality that the house serves in part as a bribe aimed at silencing criticism of the husband.]
[Note that some of the patient's harassers in the work environment may also have been motivated by an "instrumental-hedonistic" superego: "If you harass him like I tell you to, I'll see to it that you get that transfer or promotion or office that you want."]
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Subject's Sense of Masculinity Is Paradoxically Heightened By Dependency and Parasitism Where Conjoined With the "Con Job":
In mid-November 1977 subject had himself admitted to a hospital following a car accident, in order to fabricate evidence for a fraudulent lawsuit against the other driver. Subject had not been injured in any way in the accident. Subject was hospitalized for a few days.
In this situation the subject placed himself in the role of a parasitical and dependent individual and, paradoxically, may have derived a sense of masculinity from this behavior since the parasitism was itself bound up with a "con job." The subject's shame could be projected onto the patient, who, only one week earlier had been hospitalized following a serious suicide attempt: "Your brother is weak, dependent, and parasitical."
The subject's morality was such that it permitted him to behave in a parasitical and dependent (mother-fixated) manner so long as it was linked to conning behavior. Again, there may be an Oedipal parallel, as in the injured third-party complex: one is permitted to seduce the mother so long as the seduction involves the clever dupe of the father (or possibly the love object herself). But, as noted above, such an Oedipal resolution preserves narcissistic integrity at the expense of ever-present shame that must be discharged by projection or other means (such as psychosomatic distress).
_______________________________
Codependent Feature of Sister's and Subject's Superego Development:
The subject and sister began to date when both parties were aged 17 (high school seniors). It is plausible that final consolidation of the superego of the respective parties occurred in conjunction with the relationship, so that to a greater or lesser degree the respective superegos fused, resulting in a permanent codependent unit. To some extent the marriage between the subject and the patient's sister was more like a cult than a marriage, with the subject exercising a high degree of suggestibility on the patient's sister.
The couple's older child reported that she typically felt like an outsider vis-a-vis her parents' relationship, that her parents seemed to need only each other. The younger child entered three-session per week psychoanalysis at age 12. One assumes that the wife (the patient's sister) psychologically colluded with her husband (the subject), to the detriment of other parties, to maintain his narcissistic integrity, preserve his sense of masculinity and self-esteem, and ward off perceived threats and narcissistic injury. Because of the codependency, the sister would have perceived the need to maintain the subject's narcissistic integrity in order to preserve her own self-esteem. Any attack on the subject would have been perceived by the sister as an attack on herself. Also, the sister would have felt a need to actively join, acquiesce in, or refrain from criticizing, the subject's aggressive attacks on the patient; conversely, the sister may have engaged in shallow acts of solicitude toward the patient, at times, simply to express anger at the subject (the sister being aware that such solicitude aroused the subject's jealousy [sister: "I'm just calling to chat." patient: "So, why are you calling me at 10:30 at night just to chat." sister: "Well, Eddie just hollered at me."]).
The following anecdote provides just one example of the sister's collusion with the subject, aimed at preserving the subject's narcissistic integrity. In April 1969, a few weeks before the subject's marriage to the patient's sister, the family had arranged to go out together to rent formal wear for the wedding. The subject arrived at the house a little later than expected, and the patient's father chastised the subject. A few days later, the sister told the patient (then age 15) in private: "What did you think of the way Dad talked to Eddie? Eddie said to me: 'Your father is such a jerk. He is such a jerk!' He is a jerk! Don't you think Dad is a jerk?" Here, we see the subject's sensitivity to criticism, and the sister acting to preserve the subject's narcissistic integrity by devaluing the source of the presumed injury.
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In conclusion, we are able to see that the subject had three important sources of narcissistic integrity: Acting as, or imagining that he was acting as, the con artist who dupes an innocent party; or projecting shame onto persons who had been "conned" (passive "suckers"); or projecting shame onto the child who had "taken advantage of" the mother's inability to fend off the child's "parasitical" needs. In the subject's mind, the child who receives the salutary, unqualified, and unfettered love of the mother is necessarily a dependent parasite or homosexual. (The relationship to "instrumental-hedonistic" superego development is clear: the mother who gives her unqualified love freely to the child is the mother who is not looking for "payback time.")
These needs appear to be a derivative of the Oedipal situation in that they are identical to the dynamics of the injured third-party complex in which the individual needs to imagine that he is denying another male of a love object, that is, that he is committing a continuing Oedipal crime.
Paradoxically, and devastatingly for the subject, intense feelings of shame (and an unavoidable need to discharge that shame by means of projection and psychosomatic distress) were a necessary incident to the preservation of the subject's narcissistic integrity and his sense of heterosexual adjustment.
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Comparison of Subject's Injured Third-Party Complex with an Aspect of the Patient's Psychology:
The above discussion attempts to show that for the subject, every need gratification had to be supported by the belief, or illusion, that it was forbidden: that the need gratification had to involve at least the subjective illusion of a transgression and evasion of authority.
This dynamic has a parallel with an important aspect of the patient's psychology. The patient in his autobiographical sketch proposes a dynamic, presumably operative in himself, in which every need gratification has to involve some type of pain or punishment. Footnote 1 of the autobiographical study (a copy of which is attached) describes a possible body ego prototype for this dynamic, a prototype that assumes an unavoidable and internal source of frustration of every attempt at oral gratification. The patient has proposed elsewhere that this model may serve as a prototype of a wide range of subsidiary issues: intense unconscious fear of starvation (defended against by means of, or sublimated in, verbal productions); fear of loss of erective potency (the erect penis becomes flaccid by, symbolically, being "frustrated" for blood, i.e., "food"); and a pathologically hyper-developed superego that inhibits instinctual impulses (but also strengthens reality testing) in that it requires (or allows) the individual to forego the gratification needs of the pleasure ego, etc.
The two models merit further comparison.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
1. plans to get phoney (mail-order) masters degree to qualify for higher salary grade as teacher:
[Although subject did not carry through with plan, the scheme is analyzable as a wish or fantasy, or imagined way of manipulating reality.]
superego functioning: (mendacity); "I will manipulate the environment to comply in mendacious fashion with other peoples values (which have no meaning for me) in order to get the reward (money) I crave.
possibly overdetermined in sexual functioning: Pleases wife (satisfies her needs) only to the extent necessary to ensure that she continues to "put out" for him. (see cow metaphor, below)
narcissistic element: the use of a hollow image, or the creation of the appearance of reality, in order to gain a utilitarian advantage (money, love). Note the specific aim of the narcissism is a utilitarian reward, as distinguished from the person who gives the outward appearance of attaining an intellectual milestone with the ultimate aim of impressing others as having intellectual abilities.
possibly more than incidental relationship, or facial parallel, to my getting a (genuine) law degree which I render meaningless by failing to practice law.
note relationship with fraudulent lawsuit: Took on the identity of the sick person to obtain financial reward; here, takes on mere "identity" of educated person to obtain financial reward.
in both cases, he engages in a parody: the parody of a sick person, the parody of an educated person. (Possible sadistic mockery of the mother and the son's perceived image of the mother's desire for the son--to be dependent and intellectual. Note that he ridiculed both dependency and intellectual pursuits.).
2. an aspect of father's personality that was discharged in his work that may have had an effect on son's psychological development.
Father was self-employed; he had a car parts business. Taking apart cars (junkers) and selling the parts. Relationship to psychopaths (fantasies of dismemberment). See Lowen, A. Narcissism: Denial of the True Self. pp. 22-23. (Citing Alan Harrington, Psychopaths).
4. Mendacious affirmation of superego values with the intent to gain approval of authorties
a. 1969: saying to my aunt--"We saw the movie 'Boys in the Band.' The language was shocking. It was shocking to hear language like that.
mid-1980's Suzanne: "You should hear the way my dad talks. You should hear the dirty words my dad uses!"
b. early 1970's: saying to aunt at family dinner (Thanksgiving?) It's just terrible all the food that gets wasted in the world. So much food just gets thrown away.
late 1960's: Food fight with sister in kitchen of parents house--tomatoes and whipped cream all over the kitchen.
threw food in living room at my sister with father present. (also indicates lack of impulse control even with father present).
5. Fantasy Life: Identified my parents with the parents in the TV show "All in the Family."
Unacknowledged identification with fact that the son-in-law of the show ("Mike") was a parasitically-dependent person who lived with, and "off-of," his in-laws. SEXUAL ISSUES: wife as both sexual object (wife) and symbolic sister with whom the son-in-law lived in the (figurative) parents' home (incest boundary issues).
Note the fact that the wife was an only child, so that there was no symbolic representation of me. In fantasy brother-in-law dispensed with me; I was for him no more than a shadow object, a vehicle for the projection of the bad-self (parasitical, dependent, with powerful incest wishes), which, in rationalized form, was in fact himself as represented by the son-in-law on the show.
Useful to compare with my own fantasy life, specifically, my identification with the character Siegmund in Wagner's opera Die Walkure.
6. Alexithymic qualities: impoverished fantasy life (devalued fantasy). For him, I lived in a "fantasy world," a pejorative valuation. Did not recall dreams. Probably related to psychosomatic symptoms: unable to process distressing affect at a level of concious thought, but rather only at a somatic level.
7. Shengold material on victims of abuse and their uncanny ability to find spouses with similar backgrounds.
8. inference re: relationship with mother. Analogy. A farmer with a milk-cow who feeds the cow simply to keep the milk flowing. The interest is not empathy with the cow or the cow's needs per se, but simply to keep the animal happy so that it will produce the desired reward to the farmer. Also, this is a system of reciprocal rewards rather than a relationship of general give-and-take: a relationship of wide-ranging mutuality and wide-ranging needs gratification.
The farmer will assume (in mendacious fashion) whatever posture or identity the cow requires (such as a "masters degree") if this is what it will take to make the cow give milk. Object-relations characterized by mendacious pseudo-empathy and feeling masquerading as true empathy, but which is fundamentally self-oriented and goal-directed: forced into a chronic state of pseudo-identity, pseudo-feeling, or outright deception. (Constant refrain: "Eddie did such-and-such, but he didn't tell his mother. She overreacts.") Possible source of brother-in-law's negative valuation of me: "He bites the hand that feeds him." In reality, I fail to put on a masquerade to keep the milk flowing.
Object relations became complex and intertwined attempts at keeping the milk flowing from various sources (psychological equivalent of a "pyramid scheme"). Subject pleased wife to keep milk flowing from wife; proceeded to use milk from wife (the appearance of a happy wife and ideal marriage) to feed mother, to keep milk flowing from mother. Likely source of brother-in-law's negative valuation of me: "He was dating her only to please his mother." Note that in a loan business (at its most simplistic level), you take interest payments from one source to make a loan to a second party, who, in turn, repays with interest, which, in turn, is loaned to a third party, and so on.
(Dynamic possibly reflected in childhood: subject pleased mother to keep milk flowing from uncle. Perhaps, also, mother pleased son to keep milk flowing from her own brother; brother (subject's uncle) pleased son to keep milk flowing from his sister. A real "pyramid scheme!")
Relationship to superego functioning: Quantity of milk produced by the cow is a direct and ultimate measure of one's goodness as a human being. "Would she be producing all this milk if I weren't a good farmer?" But the sense of goodness was superficial; the underlying shame at the means employed to get the cow to produce cannot be mitigated. In fact, the more milk the cow produces is also, at an unconscious level, perceived as a measure of the farmer's badness, or mendacity.
9. Where a person's narcissism is overdetermined--with that narcissism the source of success in the business world, but that same trend a source of aggression in the family--the victim who complains will always be faced with accusations of jealousy that will be difficult to overcome.. "He only says these things because he's jealous of so-and-so's success."
"There are successful psychopaths according to Alan Harrington, who made a study of these personalities--'brillinat, remorseless people with icy intelligence, incapable of love or guilt, with aggressive designs on the rest of the world.' Such an individual may be an able lawyer, executive, or politician. 'Instead of murdering others,' Harrington comments, this person 'might become a corporate raider and murder companies, firing people instead of killing them, and chopping up their functions, rather than their bodies." Ironically, the key to this kind of 'success' is the person's lack of feeling--which is the key to all narcissistic disturbances." Lowen at 23.
______________________
Projection of homosexual anxiety from a person who:
1. Is afraid to join the army. Gets job as teacher to obtain military deferment.
2. But can't get a teaching job on his own and has his parents use family connections to get him a teaching job to keep him out of the army.
3. Can't get a job to support a family; has 60-year-old mother-in-law wallpaper 3 rooms in house -- can't afford to hire a paperhanger. "We were going to have her wallpaper our bedroom, but she died."
4. Can't get a job to support a family; files fraudulent law suit to "earn" extra money.
5. Goes to Florida with friends in 1965; returns with bleached hair.
6. Goes to Florida with family in 1982--has me call in sick for him every morning. But can't ask me to do him the favor. Has sister ask me to do it.
7. Has me (a former mental patient who attempted suicide two years earlier) to hand over ten thousand dollars just after my mother died. The mental patient's mother wanted her son to have the money because of his difficulties. Sister goes around saying "We wanted my mother to have a funeral just like her mother's. That was her wish, we wanted to honor her wishes." What about her wish that I keep the money that was intended for me?
Yes. I am a parasitical homosexual.
Letter to Eleanor Holmes Norton: Public Policy -- Shifting Burden of Disability Benefits
Note that this letter was written about a week after the D.C. Court of Appeals issued its final judgment and opinion in Freedman v. D.C. Department of Human Rights, on September 1, 1998, ending my litigation concerning my job termination by the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, on October 29, 1991.
My mental state as recorded by the letter is rational; the letter to Representative Norton is professional and business-like. There is no evidence of anger or vindictiveness against the D.C. Courts or any judge.
September 8, 1998
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton
Northwest Constituent Service
815 15th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 783-5065
RE: Social Security Disability Claim xxx xx xxxx
Dear Representative Norton:
I enclose, for informational purposes only, and not in contemplation of any further action by Representative Norton, a copy of the Memorandum Opinion and Judgment issued by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on September 1, 1998 in Freedman v. D.C. Department of Human Rights, No. 96-CV-961, which affirmed a prior determination made by the D.C. Department of Human Rights that there was no probable cause to believe that the action of my former employer (the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld) in terminating my employment effective October 29, 1991 (the date my disability began) was based on anything other than a valid business reason: namely, that the employer had determined in consultation with a psychiatrist that I suffered from a psychiatric disorder that can be associated with a risk of violent behavior.
Also enclosed are several recent communications I have had with the U.S. Social Security Administration concerning this issue.
I believe that the enclosed documents are pertinent to a public policy concern that may be of interest to Representative Norton: namely, the action of an employer in failing to disclose to an employee facts that the employer had acquired relating to a serious medical problem, which disclosure by the employer might have permitted the employee to file a timely disability claim with the employer's private insurer rather than with the U.S. Social Security Administration. In my own case, by the time I had learned that the employer had determined that I suffered from a psychiatric disorder, I was time-barred from filing a disability claim with the employer's own insurer.
I thank you in advance for your review of the enclosed materials.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
cc: SSA
My mental state as recorded by the letter is rational; the letter to Representative Norton is professional and business-like. There is no evidence of anger or vindictiveness against the D.C. Courts or any judge.
September 8, 1998
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Hon. Eleanor Holmes Norton
Northwest Constituent Service
815 15th Street, NW
Washington, DC 20005
(202) 783-5065
RE: Social Security Disability Claim xxx xx xxxx
Dear Representative Norton:
I enclose, for informational purposes only, and not in contemplation of any further action by Representative Norton, a copy of the Memorandum Opinion and Judgment issued by the District of Columbia Court of Appeals on September 1, 1998 in Freedman v. D.C. Department of Human Rights, No. 96-CV-961, which affirmed a prior determination made by the D.C. Department of Human Rights that there was no probable cause to believe that the action of my former employer (the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld) in terminating my employment effective October 29, 1991 (the date my disability began) was based on anything other than a valid business reason: namely, that the employer had determined in consultation with a psychiatrist that I suffered from a psychiatric disorder that can be associated with a risk of violent behavior.
Also enclosed are several recent communications I have had with the U.S. Social Security Administration concerning this issue.
I believe that the enclosed documents are pertinent to a public policy concern that may be of interest to Representative Norton: namely, the action of an employer in failing to disclose to an employee facts that the employer had acquired relating to a serious medical problem, which disclosure by the employer might have permitted the employee to file a timely disability claim with the employer's private insurer rather than with the U.S. Social Security Administration. In my own case, by the time I had learned that the employer had determined that I suffered from a psychiatric disorder, I was time-barred from filing a disability claim with the employer's own insurer.
I thank you in advance for your review of the enclosed materials.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
cc: SSA
Letter to Psychologist: Lisa Osborne, Ph.D. (1998-1999) 1/27/99
TO: Lisa Osborne
FROM: Gary Freedman
DATE: January 27, 1999
RE: Autobiographical Study -- (1/26/99 Version)
________________________________________________________
The enclosed computer disc contains an updated version of my autobiographical sketch (1/26/99 version).
The document incorporates material relating to the philosophers Spinoza and Nietzsche that I discussed in my last letter to you (dated January 20, 1999).
FROM: Gary Freedman
DATE: January 27, 1999
RE: Autobiographical Study -- (1/26/99 Version)
________________________________________________________
The enclosed computer disc contains an updated version of my autobiographical sketch (1/26/99 version).
The document incorporates material relating to the philosophers Spinoza and Nietzsche that I discussed in my last letter to you (dated January 20, 1999).
Letter to Psychologist: Lisa Osborne, Ph.D. (1998-1999) 10/7/98
October 7, 1998
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW #136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Lisa Osborne
Community Mental Health Center
Washington, DC 20007
Dear Ms. Osborne:
I submit an article published in the International Journal of Group Therapy that offers important insights about shame, threats to object attachment, and shame regulation.
It may be that a central interpersonal difficulty for me centers on the possibility that I employ a different form of shame regulation than many other people. It may be that for me shame is regulated intrapsychically at a level of internal representation and intellectual processes. Cf. Weissman, P. "Psychological Concomitants of Ego Functioning in Creativity." International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 49: 464-469 (1968) (discussing the potentially creative infant's ability to invest libido in a fantasized internal representation of the mother). Whereas for many other persons shame is regulated interpersonally, by means of external object attachment.
The enclosed article discusses a form of shame regulation that centers on external object attachment. It is useful to apply the insights about shame and shame regulation to persons other than batterers. More generally, it may be useful to view my experience of job harassment as a symbolic form of chronic group battering in which the "battering" is both (1) an effect of the threat that my intrapsychic shame regulation poses to other persons and also (2) a means by which those others regulate, or mitigate, their subjective experience of shame. In terms of my developmental background it may be useful to view my brother-in-law's chronic manipulation and control of my sister (and devaluation of me) as a symbolic form of battering that he employed to regulate his subjective experience of shame.
It may well be that a derivative of this conflict arises in the dyadic clinical situation where the therapist depicts, or chastises, me as a person who "intellectualizes" (again, the chastisement can be viewed as symbolic "battering"). It may be useful to view my intellectual processes as (1) a means of internal shame regulation and also (2) as a threat to the therapists' self-esteem (sense of professional competency as it relates to normative knowledge). Keep in mind that "intellectualization" is simply an ego processes that is analyzable, no less than any other defense, such as repression, reaction formation, isolation, undoing, or rationalization. See The Writings of Anna Freud. Vol. 5 at 244 (New York: International Universities Press, 1969).
Intellectualization is perhaps no more a bar to therapy than any of the other defenses or thought processes. But I have yet to hear a therapist say to me: "You engage in repression! That is not good. If you continue to repress, that will impair your therapeutic progress." We can see why this might be so. Of all the ego defenses, it is the patient's use of intellectualization that poses the most immediate threat to the therapist's self-esteem. Also--and this is worthy of close scrutiny--it may well be that therapists who complain about my "intellectualization" may simply be complaining about an outward manifestation, or marker, of something going on at a deeper level that they find disturbing: namely, my style of shame regulation.
Further, it is important to recognize that the more highly internalized is the patient's style of shame regulation, the more immune he will be to the therapist's use of shame (or chastisement) as a therapeutic modality. Thus, where a therapist tends to rely on shame as a therapeutic modality the therapist's own shame (and frustration) will be aroused by a highly-ego-differentiated patient's seeming imperviousness to chastisement.
I suspect that this particular dynamic is the source of many a medical recommendation that has been made in my case: and note that a medical recommendation can be viewed as another symbolic form of battering of the patient that has the effect of moderating the therapist's shame.
I note incidentally that one of my previous treating psychiatrists, Dr. Palombo (a psychoanalyst), never said that I intellectualized, although he once mentioned that I had an unusual level of idea production.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW #136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Lisa Osborne
Community Mental Health Center
Washington, DC 20007
Dear Ms. Osborne:
I submit an article published in the International Journal of Group Therapy that offers important insights about shame, threats to object attachment, and shame regulation.
It may be that a central interpersonal difficulty for me centers on the possibility that I employ a different form of shame regulation than many other people. It may be that for me shame is regulated intrapsychically at a level of internal representation and intellectual processes. Cf. Weissman, P. "Psychological Concomitants of Ego Functioning in Creativity." International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 49: 464-469 (1968) (discussing the potentially creative infant's ability to invest libido in a fantasized internal representation of the mother). Whereas for many other persons shame is regulated interpersonally, by means of external object attachment.
The enclosed article discusses a form of shame regulation that centers on external object attachment. It is useful to apply the insights about shame and shame regulation to persons other than batterers. More generally, it may be useful to view my experience of job harassment as a symbolic form of chronic group battering in which the "battering" is both (1) an effect of the threat that my intrapsychic shame regulation poses to other persons and also (2) a means by which those others regulate, or mitigate, their subjective experience of shame. In terms of my developmental background it may be useful to view my brother-in-law's chronic manipulation and control of my sister (and devaluation of me) as a symbolic form of battering that he employed to regulate his subjective experience of shame.
It may well be that a derivative of this conflict arises in the dyadic clinical situation where the therapist depicts, or chastises, me as a person who "intellectualizes" (again, the chastisement can be viewed as symbolic "battering"). It may be useful to view my intellectual processes as (1) a means of internal shame regulation and also (2) as a threat to the therapists' self-esteem (sense of professional competency as it relates to normative knowledge). Keep in mind that "intellectualization" is simply an ego processes that is analyzable, no less than any other defense, such as repression, reaction formation, isolation, undoing, or rationalization. See The Writings of Anna Freud. Vol. 5 at 244 (New York: International Universities Press, 1969).
Intellectualization is perhaps no more a bar to therapy than any of the other defenses or thought processes. But I have yet to hear a therapist say to me: "You engage in repression! That is not good. If you continue to repress, that will impair your therapeutic progress." We can see why this might be so. Of all the ego defenses, it is the patient's use of intellectualization that poses the most immediate threat to the therapist's self-esteem. Also--and this is worthy of close scrutiny--it may well be that therapists who complain about my "intellectualization" may simply be complaining about an outward manifestation, or marker, of something going on at a deeper level that they find disturbing: namely, my style of shame regulation.
Further, it is important to recognize that the more highly internalized is the patient's style of shame regulation, the more immune he will be to the therapist's use of shame (or chastisement) as a therapeutic modality. Thus, where a therapist tends to rely on shame as a therapeutic modality the therapist's own shame (and frustration) will be aroused by a highly-ego-differentiated patient's seeming imperviousness to chastisement.
I suspect that this particular dynamic is the source of many a medical recommendation that has been made in my case: and note that a medical recommendation can be viewed as another symbolic form of battering of the patient that has the effect of moderating the therapist's shame.
I note incidentally that one of my previous treating psychiatrists, Dr. Palombo (a psychoanalyst), never said that I intellectualized, although he once mentioned that I had an unusual level of idea production.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
Letter to Psychologist: Lisa Osborne, Ph.D. (1998-1999) 1/20/99
TO: Lisa Osborne
FROM: Gary Freedman
DATE: January 20, 1999
RE: Schizophrenia - Paranoia - Surveillance Fantasy
__________________________________________________________
I offer the following thoughts as a footnote to our consultation on Wednesday, January 13, 1999. At that time we discussed the diagnosis of a psychotic disorder in my case and my belief that I have been under surveillance by my former employer (a law firm managed by Robert Strauss and Vernon Jordan, who happens to be a close friend of President Clinton).
It is very easy to dismiss my ideas that I have been under surveillance by powerful and influential people as a product of my paranoia.
I want to offer some highly speculative but oddly plausible ideas about the issue of surveillance. I have identified two historical figures whose privacy was in fact invaded and who also suffered from schizophrenia-like qualities.
Those two figures are the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, a protege of the composer Richard Wagner, and Baruch ("Bento") Spinoza, a prot‚g‚ of the leading Rabbi in Amsterdam, Saul Morteira. Wagner had a clandestine correspondence with Nietzsche's medical doctor, who breached Nietzsche's confidences; Morteira placed Spinoza under surveillance by "stool pigeons."
According to Albert Rothenberg, M.D., both Spinoza and Nietzsche were possible candidates for the diagnosis schizophrenia. See Madness and Creativity at 155 (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1990).
But as we see, the diagnosis schizophrenia does not deny that these individuals were in fact intruded upon. Indeed, I would like to offer the hypothesis that in certain few cases the existence of schizophrenic qualities may dispose a person to actual surveillance.
Logically, it appears that a person who is secretive, solitary, somewhat odd, but also brilliant and iconoclastic, might attract the interest and intrusion (and defensive, paranoid concerns) of persons of power and influence (whose own personalities suggest a tendency toward narcissism. Compare Robert Strauss: "World leaders are fascinated by me; they are intrigued by me.")
A notable literary paradigm would be Shakespeare's Hamlet, an odd but gifted figure, who was placed under surveillance by his step-father, Claudius, King of Denmark.
Rothenberg also points out that there is a thin line that separates family backgrounds that promote creativity and those that promote schizophrenia. See Madness and Creativity at 12-13. Rothenberg points out that certain types of disturbed family communications (that might promote schizophrenia) can train a person to be especially sensitive to implied messages in interpersonal communications.
My point is that the issues are complex and overlapping. While I may be schizophrenic, it can also be said that I have the personality and background that might make me especially sensitive to implied messages in interpersonal communications, and may also have the personality that disposes me to being placed under surveillance.
You can reach Dr. Rothenberg at the Austin Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Coincidentally, Dr. Rothenberg is a graduate of Tufts Medical School, which is Dr. Quint's medical school alma mater. Dr. Rothenberg heads a long-term research program, "Studies in the Creative Process."
FROM: Gary Freedman
DATE: January 20, 1999
RE: Schizophrenia - Paranoia - Surveillance Fantasy
__________________________________________________________
I offer the following thoughts as a footnote to our consultation on Wednesday, January 13, 1999. At that time we discussed the diagnosis of a psychotic disorder in my case and my belief that I have been under surveillance by my former employer (a law firm managed by Robert Strauss and Vernon Jordan, who happens to be a close friend of President Clinton).
It is very easy to dismiss my ideas that I have been under surveillance by powerful and influential people as a product of my paranoia.
I want to offer some highly speculative but oddly plausible ideas about the issue of surveillance. I have identified two historical figures whose privacy was in fact invaded and who also suffered from schizophrenia-like qualities.
Those two figures are the philosophers Friedrich Nietzsche, a protege of the composer Richard Wagner, and Baruch ("Bento") Spinoza, a prot‚g‚ of the leading Rabbi in Amsterdam, Saul Morteira. Wagner had a clandestine correspondence with Nietzsche's medical doctor, who breached Nietzsche's confidences; Morteira placed Spinoza under surveillance by "stool pigeons."
According to Albert Rothenberg, M.D., both Spinoza and Nietzsche were possible candidates for the diagnosis schizophrenia. See Madness and Creativity at 155 (Baltimore: John Hopkins Press, 1990).
But as we see, the diagnosis schizophrenia does not deny that these individuals were in fact intruded upon. Indeed, I would like to offer the hypothesis that in certain few cases the existence of schizophrenic qualities may dispose a person to actual surveillance.
Logically, it appears that a person who is secretive, solitary, somewhat odd, but also brilliant and iconoclastic, might attract the interest and intrusion (and defensive, paranoid concerns) of persons of power and influence (whose own personalities suggest a tendency toward narcissism. Compare Robert Strauss: "World leaders are fascinated by me; they are intrigued by me.")
A notable literary paradigm would be Shakespeare's Hamlet, an odd but gifted figure, who was placed under surveillance by his step-father, Claudius, King of Denmark.
Rothenberg also points out that there is a thin line that separates family backgrounds that promote creativity and those that promote schizophrenia. See Madness and Creativity at 12-13. Rothenberg points out that certain types of disturbed family communications (that might promote schizophrenia) can train a person to be especially sensitive to implied messages in interpersonal communications.
My point is that the issues are complex and overlapping. While I may be schizophrenic, it can also be said that I have the personality and background that might make me especially sensitive to implied messages in interpersonal communications, and may also have the personality that disposes me to being placed under surveillance.
You can reach Dr. Rothenberg at the Austin Riggs Center in Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Coincidentally, Dr. Rothenberg is a graduate of Tufts Medical School, which is Dr. Quint's medical school alma mater. Dr. Rothenberg heads a long-term research program, "Studies in the Creative Process."
Letter to Psychologist: Lisa Osborne, Ph.D. (1998-1999) 11/4/98
November 4, 1998
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW #136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Lisa Osborne
Community Mental Health Center
Washington, DC
Dear Ms. Osborne:
I submit a paper that, I believe, provides insight about an important area of my personality, the issue of guilt; the particular type of guilt discussed, as well as the source of that guilt in parental blaming behavior, seems apt. See Friedman, M. "Survivor Guilt in the Pathogenesis of Anorexia Nervosa." Psychiatry 48: 25-39 (February 1985). Incidentally, one of my previous treating psychiatrists, Stanley R. Palombo, M.D., serves as an editorial adviser to this journal.
The author observes that survivor guilt arises out of interpersonal processes in the family and, therefore, orthodox psychoanalytic theory is inadequate to understanding the phenomenon (p. 36-38).
I am intrigued by the connecting link one can make between the stresses placed on a subject by family members who suffer from extreme narcissistic disturbance (particularly narcissistic disturbance rooted in percocious ego development that itself may have its origin in the child's adjustment to a defective mother) and the development of guilt in the subject.
Beren outlines various forms of narcissistic disturbance rooted in preciocious ego development:
Precocious ego development. This can be observed in the extreme unevenness of development, where certain capacities and functions may be highly matured or overdeveloped while others lag behind. This uneven development usually dovetails with the parents' inability to see the child as a whole in a developmentally appropriate way, and with their overemphasis on certain of the child's functions that fit in with their own narcissistic needs.
For example, the parents may give a good deal of praise and encouragement for independence, at the expense of emotional and physical closeness. Thus the child discovers that the parents will not accept his dependence, and learns early on to take care of himself. Or the parent may overvalue one particular ego function such as speech, so that speech becomes overvalued and used for defensive purposes rather than for communicative or thought clarifying purposes (citation omitted). What happens to these children is that they tend to use intellectualization and become emotionally removed and aloof. Another outcome may be the child who functions emotionally and physically as a little parent in the family, i.e., when there is an extreme form of role reversal in the parent-child relationship (citation omitted). Beren, P. "Narcissistic Disorders in Children." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Vol. 47: 265-278 at 276 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
I have reported that two persons in my family showed marked signs of extreme narcissistic disturbance, namely my maternal aunt and my brother-in-law. We can see that these indivdiuals' own interaction with their respective mothers fostered disturbed attitudes about mother-child relationships in general--attitudes that these individuals as adults actively, or propagandistically, promoted in the family as reflecting a salutary ideal of parenting, but which attitudes were, in fact, disturbed and guilt-promoting.
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW #136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Lisa Osborne
Community Mental Health Center
Washington, DC
Dear Ms. Osborne:
I submit a paper that, I believe, provides insight about an important area of my personality, the issue of guilt; the particular type of guilt discussed, as well as the source of that guilt in parental blaming behavior, seems apt. See Friedman, M. "Survivor Guilt in the Pathogenesis of Anorexia Nervosa." Psychiatry 48: 25-39 (February 1985). Incidentally, one of my previous treating psychiatrists, Stanley R. Palombo, M.D., serves as an editorial adviser to this journal.
The author observes that survivor guilt arises out of interpersonal processes in the family and, therefore, orthodox psychoanalytic theory is inadequate to understanding the phenomenon (p. 36-38).
I am intrigued by the connecting link one can make between the stresses placed on a subject by family members who suffer from extreme narcissistic disturbance (particularly narcissistic disturbance rooted in percocious ego development that itself may have its origin in the child's adjustment to a defective mother) and the development of guilt in the subject.
Beren outlines various forms of narcissistic disturbance rooted in preciocious ego development:
Precocious ego development. This can be observed in the extreme unevenness of development, where certain capacities and functions may be highly matured or overdeveloped while others lag behind. This uneven development usually dovetails with the parents' inability to see the child as a whole in a developmentally appropriate way, and with their overemphasis on certain of the child's functions that fit in with their own narcissistic needs.
For example, the parents may give a good deal of praise and encouragement for independence, at the expense of emotional and physical closeness. Thus the child discovers that the parents will not accept his dependence, and learns early on to take care of himself. Or the parent may overvalue one particular ego function such as speech, so that speech becomes overvalued and used for defensive purposes rather than for communicative or thought clarifying purposes (citation omitted). What happens to these children is that they tend to use intellectualization and become emotionally removed and aloof. Another outcome may be the child who functions emotionally and physically as a little parent in the family, i.e., when there is an extreme form of role reversal in the parent-child relationship (citation omitted). Beren, P. "Narcissistic Disorders in Children." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Vol. 47: 265-278 at 276 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992).
I have reported that two persons in my family showed marked signs of extreme narcissistic disturbance, namely my maternal aunt and my brother-in-law. We can see that these indivdiuals' own interaction with their respective mothers fostered disturbed attitudes about mother-child relationships in general--attitudes that these individuals as adults actively, or propagandistically, promoted in the family as reflecting a salutary ideal of parenting, but which attitudes were, in fact, disturbed and guilt-promoting.
Letter to Psychologist: Lisa Osborne, Ph.D. (1998-1999) 9/30/98
TO: Lisa Osborne
FROM: Gary Freedman
DATE: September 30, 1998
RE: Personal Computer Files
________________________
I submit for your general information three computer discs that contain my personal files for the period November 1996 to the present.
FROM: Gary Freedman
DATE: September 30, 1998
RE: Personal Computer Files
________________________
I submit for your general information three computer discs that contain my personal files for the period November 1996 to the present.
Letter to Psychologist: Lisa Osborne, Ph.D. (1998-1999) 9/2/98
TO: Lisa Osborne
\FROM: Gary Freedman
DATE: September 2, 1998
RE: Attached Article Concerning Lynn Margulis
____________________________
I submit a copy of an article originally published in the New York Times (January 14, 1996) about a microbiologist named Lynn Margulis, whose scientific thinking is considered unusually original and who is unmoved by peer rejection of, or professional attacks on, her work.
I believe it is useful to think about how you would do psychotherapy with someone like Margulis, or even why someone like Margulis would submit herself for psychotherapy.
Another important issue is how you distinguish between a person who holds, even in the face of social rejection, to a view of the world that is not shared by others who happens to be paranoid and a person who holds to a view of the world that is not shared by others who happens to be original and courageous in her thinking.
I am intrigued that there might be an underlying relation between seemingly unrelated aspects of personality: between the cognitive aspects of personality that account for originality of perception and the dynamic aspects of personality that account for a need for mastery and the ability to dispense with peer approval. It may be no mere accident of personality development that these specific cognitive and dynamic issues are prominently expressed in certain individuals.
\FROM: Gary Freedman
DATE: September 2, 1998
RE: Attached Article Concerning Lynn Margulis
____________________________
I submit a copy of an article originally published in the New York Times (January 14, 1996) about a microbiologist named Lynn Margulis, whose scientific thinking is considered unusually original and who is unmoved by peer rejection of, or professional attacks on, her work.
I believe it is useful to think about how you would do psychotherapy with someone like Margulis, or even why someone like Margulis would submit herself for psychotherapy.
Another important issue is how you distinguish between a person who holds, even in the face of social rejection, to a view of the world that is not shared by others who happens to be paranoid and a person who holds to a view of the world that is not shared by others who happens to be original and courageous in her thinking.
I am intrigued that there might be an underlying relation between seemingly unrelated aspects of personality: between the cognitive aspects of personality that account for originality of perception and the dynamic aspects of personality that account for a need for mastery and the ability to dispense with peer approval. It may be no mere accident of personality development that these specific cognitive and dynamic issues are prominently expressed in certain individuals.
Letter to Psychologist: Lisa Osborne, Ph.D. (1998-1999) 9/23/98
September 23, 1998
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Lisa Osborne
Community Mental Health Center
North Annex
Washington, DC 20007
Dear Ms. Osborne:
The enclosed computer disc contains an updated version of the autobiographical creative piece, an earlier version of which I have already provided to you. In its latest revision the document contains references to the 19th-century writer, Emile Zola, a key figure in the Dreyfus case. (See file name "BIO-9" at page 18; and "BIO-10" at pages 1, 2, and 11.)
The latest updates are significant with regard to the operation of the repetition compulsion in my mental life. Evidence relating to the operation of the repetition compulsion would tend to show, I think, that my life difficulties are not the product of a lack of ego structure, but rather the product of my attempt to master childhood experiences that I experienced as overwhelming. The evidence also tends to highlight my opportunistic use of a hostile environment to further the operation of the repetition compulsion.
I offer the following chronology:
1. October 1991: My employment with the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld is terminated. All of my job evaluations are above-average or outstanding. My personnel file does not contain a record of any reprimands, or disciplinary action.
2. May 1993: I provide to my treating psychiatrist at the George Washington University Medical Center the first version of what would evolve into my autobiographical writing. The writing contains references to the so-called Dreyfus Affair, which concerned the arrest and conviction of a member of the French General Staff, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, on the charge of selling French military secrets to the German government. Dreyfus was, in fact, innocent. In order to justify the conviction, members of the General Staff later fabricated evidence to show that Dreyfus was guilty.
3. July 1, 1993: I speak with a coworker on the telephone (Patricia A. McNeil) who tells me certain details of my job termination about which I had not previously known. McNeil told me that in the period after the job termination, after I had left the building, my supervisor gathered her employees together to advise that she feared that I might return to the firm to kill her, and that she therefore was arranging to have the lock to the office suite changed. My supervisor's defamatory statements about my potential for violence were not elicited by my own bad acts. (See paragraph 1, above).
4. In January 1994 I begin to write to various federal authorities about my job termination. In the fall of 1994, I begin to use the information McNeil provided to me (in July 1993), relating to the fears of employees at Akin Gump that I was homicidal, in an attempt to provoke federal law enforcement to investigate my job termination. The content of several of the letters provoke criminal investigation of me, instead. Federal law enforcement refuses to investigate my job termination itself.
5. September 1998: The autobiographical writing in its present revision contains references to Emile Zola. Oddly enough, the latest updates have an uncanny fit with the earliest version of the writing, which I first prepared in May 1993, before I had known about my supervisor's defamatory statements about me and before I ever contemplated writing any letters to federal law enforcement.
My act of writing letters to federal agencies, letters which suggest that I am violent and which therefore place me at risk of criminal investigation, is intended as a collateral attack on my job termination by Akin Gump. My actions parallel the action of the French novelist Emile Zola in writing a letter to the President of France aimed at reopening the Dreyfus case.
Zola hoped that his act of writing a libelous letter to the President would in all likelihood result in his criminal prosecution, which would provide Zola a legal forum to introduce evidence that would clear Dreyfus. Zola was in fact prosecuted, but the court refused to allow Zola to introduce any evidence relating to Dreyfus--that is, the court refused to allow Zola to use his own trial on the charge of criminal libel as a means of attacking the prior conviction of Dreyfus. See Shirer, W.L. The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 at 59-60 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969).
In effect, in my relations with my former employer I am Dreyfus--an innocent party who has been wrongly defamed. In my relations with federal law enforcement I am Zola--an outraged party who places himself at risk of criminal prosecution as a collateral attack on a prior wrong. I believe this material provides important insight into the following operative issues in my personality: guilt, ego differentiation (superego development), my attempts at mastery through repetition, and my opportunistic use of a hostile environment to gratify my unconscious needs.
Of further interest is the role of the repetition compulsion in Zola's own personality. Although it was not until the late 1890's that Zola got involved in the Dreyfus case, his previously written novels center on the issues of social injustice and reform. In the novel The Debacle, written in 1871 (years before the Dreyfus Affair), there is an uncanny foreshadowing of the Dreyfus prosecution: "Oh, how heartbreaking it was, the most guilty ones escaping punishment and flaunting their impunity in broad daylight while the innocent rotted in the ground." Zola, E., The Debacle, Tancock, L.W., trans., at 502 (1871; reprint New York: Penguin Books, 1972). The evidence suggests that Zola himself used the Dreyfus case opportunistically to further his own unconscious needs.
Incidentally, the Dreyfus case was the subject of a movie made in the 1930's titled The Life of Emile Zola; it is available at many video stores. One of my letters expressly quotes a line from the movie. A letter dated June 30, 1997 that I wrote to Governor Tom Kean of New Jersey (attached) contains the line "I was later secretly certified insane. . . ." I intentionally borrowed that line from the movie. In a courtroom scene depicting the trial of Zola, one of Zola's lawyers asks a member of the French General Staff: "Isn't it true that you had a perfectly sane intelligence officer certified insane when he threatened to expose you?" (That line in my letter to Governor Kean was intended as a secret expression of irony).
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Lisa Osborne
Community Mental Health Center
North Annex
Washington, DC 20007
Dear Ms. Osborne:
The enclosed computer disc contains an updated version of the autobiographical creative piece, an earlier version of which I have already provided to you. In its latest revision the document contains references to the 19th-century writer, Emile Zola, a key figure in the Dreyfus case. (See file name "BIO-9" at page 18; and "BIO-10" at pages 1, 2, and 11.)
The latest updates are significant with regard to the operation of the repetition compulsion in my mental life. Evidence relating to the operation of the repetition compulsion would tend to show, I think, that my life difficulties are not the product of a lack of ego structure, but rather the product of my attempt to master childhood experiences that I experienced as overwhelming. The evidence also tends to highlight my opportunistic use of a hostile environment to further the operation of the repetition compulsion.
I offer the following chronology:
1. October 1991: My employment with the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld is terminated. All of my job evaluations are above-average or outstanding. My personnel file does not contain a record of any reprimands, or disciplinary action.
2. May 1993: I provide to my treating psychiatrist at the George Washington University Medical Center the first version of what would evolve into my autobiographical writing. The writing contains references to the so-called Dreyfus Affair, which concerned the arrest and conviction of a member of the French General Staff, Captain Alfred Dreyfus, on the charge of selling French military secrets to the German government. Dreyfus was, in fact, innocent. In order to justify the conviction, members of the General Staff later fabricated evidence to show that Dreyfus was guilty.
3. July 1, 1993: I speak with a coworker on the telephone (Patricia A. McNeil) who tells me certain details of my job termination about which I had not previously known. McNeil told me that in the period after the job termination, after I had left the building, my supervisor gathered her employees together to advise that she feared that I might return to the firm to kill her, and that she therefore was arranging to have the lock to the office suite changed. My supervisor's defamatory statements about my potential for violence were not elicited by my own bad acts. (See paragraph 1, above).
4. In January 1994 I begin to write to various federal authorities about my job termination. In the fall of 1994, I begin to use the information McNeil provided to me (in July 1993), relating to the fears of employees at Akin Gump that I was homicidal, in an attempt to provoke federal law enforcement to investigate my job termination. The content of several of the letters provoke criminal investigation of me, instead. Federal law enforcement refuses to investigate my job termination itself.
5. September 1998: The autobiographical writing in its present revision contains references to Emile Zola. Oddly enough, the latest updates have an uncanny fit with the earliest version of the writing, which I first prepared in May 1993, before I had known about my supervisor's defamatory statements about me and before I ever contemplated writing any letters to federal law enforcement.
My act of writing letters to federal agencies, letters which suggest that I am violent and which therefore place me at risk of criminal investigation, is intended as a collateral attack on my job termination by Akin Gump. My actions parallel the action of the French novelist Emile Zola in writing a letter to the President of France aimed at reopening the Dreyfus case.
Zola hoped that his act of writing a libelous letter to the President would in all likelihood result in his criminal prosecution, which would provide Zola a legal forum to introduce evidence that would clear Dreyfus. Zola was in fact prosecuted, but the court refused to allow Zola to introduce any evidence relating to Dreyfus--that is, the court refused to allow Zola to use his own trial on the charge of criminal libel as a means of attacking the prior conviction of Dreyfus. See Shirer, W.L. The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940 at 59-60 (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1969).
In effect, in my relations with my former employer I am Dreyfus--an innocent party who has been wrongly defamed. In my relations with federal law enforcement I am Zola--an outraged party who places himself at risk of criminal prosecution as a collateral attack on a prior wrong. I believe this material provides important insight into the following operative issues in my personality: guilt, ego differentiation (superego development), my attempts at mastery through repetition, and my opportunistic use of a hostile environment to gratify my unconscious needs.
Of further interest is the role of the repetition compulsion in Zola's own personality. Although it was not until the late 1890's that Zola got involved in the Dreyfus case, his previously written novels center on the issues of social injustice and reform. In the novel The Debacle, written in 1871 (years before the Dreyfus Affair), there is an uncanny foreshadowing of the Dreyfus prosecution: "Oh, how heartbreaking it was, the most guilty ones escaping punishment and flaunting their impunity in broad daylight while the innocent rotted in the ground." Zola, E., The Debacle, Tancock, L.W., trans., at 502 (1871; reprint New York: Penguin Books, 1972). The evidence suggests that Zola himself used the Dreyfus case opportunistically to further his own unconscious needs.
Incidentally, the Dreyfus case was the subject of a movie made in the 1930's titled The Life of Emile Zola; it is available at many video stores. One of my letters expressly quotes a line from the movie. A letter dated June 30, 1997 that I wrote to Governor Tom Kean of New Jersey (attached) contains the line "I was later secretly certified insane. . . ." I intentionally borrowed that line from the movie. In a courtroom scene depicting the trial of Zola, one of Zola's lawyers asks a member of the French General Staff: "Isn't it true that you had a perfectly sane intelligence officer certified insane when he threatened to expose you?" (That line in my letter to Governor Kean was intended as a secret expression of irony).
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
Letter to Psychologist: Lisa Osborne, Ph.D. (1998-1999) 9/16/98
September 16, 1998
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Lisa Osborne
Community Mental Health Center
Washington, DC 20007
Dear Ms. Osborne:
This letter attempts to analyze Dr. Taub's view that my action in writing letters to various authorities is the product of my social isolation: that because I am isolated and lonely I write letters both to express feelings of anger associated with isolation and abandonment and to attempt to create some bond with the outside world.
I believe this view is defensive, a projection of Dr. Taub's own internal needs and threats.
If you look at Dr. Taub's analysis, you find three main assertions:
1. The patient is isolated, lonely, and overwhelmed by feelings of abandonment.
2. The patient writes letters to persons that refer to the possibility that he is violent.
3. There is a causal link between (1.) the patient's isolation and (2.) the patient's act of writing letters.
My own analysis of Dr. Taub's observation is that, for Dr. Taub, my letters to the authorities are a source of shame and embarrassment; i.e., Dr. Taub experiences my letters to external authorities as a narcissistic injury. Further, Dr. Taub then proceeds to focus on my social isolation as a means of abreacting the narcissistic injury that my letters pose for him and the consequent anxiety he experiences in connecttion with the fear of abandonment, a derivative of the child's fear of abandonment associated with being found out by the parents (the "authorities").
I suspect that for Dr. Taub, social isolation is a shame-endowed state. (For me, I believe, there is reason to believe that I experience social isolation not as shameful, but rather as frustrating, indicating my higher level of ego differentiation and superego development.) Indeed, it is useful to assign a tentative value to the proposition that for Dr. Taub there is a symmetry, or parallel, between, on the one hand, the shame he attaches to social isolation or abandonment and, on the other, the shame he attaches to the fear of being seen by the authorities, which affective symmetry, or equivalence, permits Dr. Taub to freely substitute anxiety in connection with one state (social isolation or abandonment) with anxiety associated with another state (fear of being seen, aroused by my letter writing to the authorities).
In some sense, or at some level in his personality, Dr. Taub derives satisfaction by imagining my status as rejected, abandoned, or socially isolated; what might be termed his "fantasy of exile" as it pertains to me (regardless of how reality adequate) is the ideational predicate of the act of shunning (or the act of an authoritarian political power in actually exiling or imprisoning) an individual whose acts or statements are viewed as a threat to one's position, status, or the maintenance of one's valued interpersonal relations. What Dr. Taub depicts as a cause/effect analysis ("Your letters to the authorities are an effect of your painful social isolation") is really based on a more primitive notion of causality: "I am embarrassed by your letters, which threaten my status, and I derive satisfaction from the fact that you are lonely and miserable, which is just punishment for your behavior.")
I submit a copy of an excerpt of a letter dated September 6, 1995 that I wrote to a former treating psychiatrist at the George Washington University Medical Center, Dimitrios Georgopoulos, M.D., that is consistent with my analysis. The letter memorializes a psychiatric consultation at which I read to Dr. Georgopoulos a letter that I planned to submit to the Office of U.S. Attorney that detailed inadequacies in my psychiatric treatment. The letter records Dr. Georgopoulos's reaction of anger and agitation, and his gratuitous act of focusing on my social isolation, which I believe was an attempt to abreact his own feelings of embarrassment and narcissistic injury. In effect, Dr. Georgopoulos was saying: "You plan to embarrass me with your letter to the authorities. You threaten my status thereby. I will now focus on your shameful defect, your social isolation. I derive satisfaction by imagining, or fantasizing, your social isolation: it gratifies me to imagine you in the shameful state that your actions may bring to me--shame, abandonment by my superiors, and scorn by my peers."
What is significant for me in these reactions by psychotherapists is the possible relation between the reactions of these mental health professionals and my interpersonal difficulties generally. It is as if Dr. Taub's reaction to me (and that of Dr. Georgopoulos) serves as a model for the difficulties I face socially and in the workplace.
Perhaps we can state as a formula: In any situation in which my presence, behaviors, or statements pose a narcissistic injury to others, those others will discharge that injury by shunning behaviors (that is, actually engage in the behaviors that are only fantasized in the clinical situation by the treating therapist) or engage in attempts to interfere with my valued relations (social or professional). Thus, for example, in a law firm, a coworker who experiences a superior's esteem of me as a narcissistic injury (i.e., a source of jealousy), may discharge or abreact that injury by interfering in some way in my social relations, typically by means of defamation. See, e.g., Spitzer, R.L., et al. DSM-III-R Casebook. A Learning Companion to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd ed. (revised) at 197-199 (case report titled "False Rumors") (note that there is a dynamic relationship between the attribution that a person is a homosexual (i.e., a symbolic "castrate") and the act of exiling someone from the community (again, turning that individual into a symbolic "castrate"). A brother-in-law who is jealous of my relationship with my sister may maliciously attempt to depict me to my sister as a potential child molester: a defamation that discharges the narcissistic injury he experiences in relation to me.
It is important to compare the model that underlies Dr. Taub's observations with another model, which assumes a higher level ego differentiation and superego development.
In this alternative model, my letter writing would not be viewed as an effect of my social isolation. Rather, both the letter writing and the social isolation, and social difficulties I experience, would be viewed as equal effects of a harsh, internalized superego. That is, both the letter writing and the social difficulties can be viewed as the effects of my struggle with guilt, inhibition in drive expression, the consequences of an ego capacity to dispense with social support or approval, and a tendency to engage in rebellion, see, e.g., Fernando, J. "The Exceptions: Structural and Dynamic Aspects." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Vol. 52: 17-28 at 21 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), among other factors.
Put another way, Dr. Taub's analysis, or model, presupposes a lack of ego differentiation and superego development relating to the patient's failure to internalize the parental object. As a consequence the patient is overwhelmed by feelings of painful isolation and shame when denied the comfort of an external parental derivative (or external source of impulse control) and, further, lacks the superego controls to curb his acting out (in the form of letter writing, which abreacts the patient's rage resulting from feelings of abandonment). In this model, the patient's letter writing might be viewed as a derivative of the screams of the lonely infant who yearns to be held by the mother. In terms of superego controls, the focal issue is defects which impair the patient's ability to control impulses, which brings him in conflict with social norms.
The alternative model assumes a high level of ego differentiation and superego development related to the patient's having internalized the parental object, which permits or enables the patient to withstand social isolation or social rejection (that is, enables the patient to avoid shame even in the absence of an external source of impulse control) and enables the patient to express moral outrage, regardless of social disapproval, in intellectualized productions (such as letter writing). In this model, the patient's letter writing might be viewed as a derivative of the behavior of the potentially creative infant who, when left alone, is able to partially decathect the mother and invest libido in fantasy, see Weissman, P. "Psychological Concomitants of Ego Functioning in Creativity." International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 49: 464-469 (1968), as well as reflect the precocity of superego development found in creative persons, see Storr, A. The Dynamics of Creation (New York: Atheneum, 1977). In terms of superego controls, the focal issue is a deeply imbedded, personal system of norms, not influenced by external factors, which may bring the patient in conflict with social norms.
Cf. Results of Psychological Testing Performed by the George Washington University Medical Center Department of Psychiatry, May 1994 at 5: "There is a tendency for him to challenge or denounce social sanctions, to a point where he may lose sight of his own best interest." Cf. Myden, W. "An Interpretation and Evaluation of Certain Personality Characteristics Involved in Creative Production." In: A Rorschach Reader, Sherman, M.H., ed. at 149-167, 164-5 (International Universities Press, Inc., New York: 1960): "One of the factors which loomed large in the difference between [creative subjects and non-creative controls], and not given consideration in psychoanalytic literature, was the sense of psychological role in life. This concept denotes inner tendencies, deeply imbedded in the personality of the subject, not easily modified, which determine nearly all meaningful relationships."
It is interesting to observe that the content of the patient's letters to law enforcement that have posed problems for him typically relate to professional performance, either that of his treating mental health professionals or his employers. The letters seem to carry the message: "You see, this is not right! These people are not meeting the standards of their profession! They are incompetent buffoons. Someone must investigate this!" This suggests the role of the superego in the patient's letter writing: an issue that may, in fact, be related to the patient's inhibitions in practicing the profession in which he trained. (That is, the content of the patient's letters and the patient's failure to practice law may be overdetermined).
An additional issue in the patient's references to violence, which is ignored in Dr. Taub's analysis, is the patient's transformation of his feelings of passive victimization by other persons (that is, the patient's feelings of having been "violated" by others) into active mastery by use of imposture and parody. Unconsciously, the patient feels aggressed upon or "violated" (a passive state), which he masters by suggestions that he is "violent." But the precise active state that the patient assumes is not actual violence or even threats of violence, but parody. The underlying message, once again, is the patient's perception that those who victimize him are fundamentally idiots or buffoons.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Lisa Osborne
Community Mental Health Center
Washington, DC 20007
Dear Ms. Osborne:
This letter attempts to analyze Dr. Taub's view that my action in writing letters to various authorities is the product of my social isolation: that because I am isolated and lonely I write letters both to express feelings of anger associated with isolation and abandonment and to attempt to create some bond with the outside world.
I believe this view is defensive, a projection of Dr. Taub's own internal needs and threats.
If you look at Dr. Taub's analysis, you find three main assertions:
1. The patient is isolated, lonely, and overwhelmed by feelings of abandonment.
2. The patient writes letters to persons that refer to the possibility that he is violent.
3. There is a causal link between (1.) the patient's isolation and (2.) the patient's act of writing letters.
My own analysis of Dr. Taub's observation is that, for Dr. Taub, my letters to the authorities are a source of shame and embarrassment; i.e., Dr. Taub experiences my letters to external authorities as a narcissistic injury. Further, Dr. Taub then proceeds to focus on my social isolation as a means of abreacting the narcissistic injury that my letters pose for him and the consequent anxiety he experiences in connecttion with the fear of abandonment, a derivative of the child's fear of abandonment associated with being found out by the parents (the "authorities").
I suspect that for Dr. Taub, social isolation is a shame-endowed state. (For me, I believe, there is reason to believe that I experience social isolation not as shameful, but rather as frustrating, indicating my higher level of ego differentiation and superego development.) Indeed, it is useful to assign a tentative value to the proposition that for Dr. Taub there is a symmetry, or parallel, between, on the one hand, the shame he attaches to social isolation or abandonment and, on the other, the shame he attaches to the fear of being seen by the authorities, which affective symmetry, or equivalence, permits Dr. Taub to freely substitute anxiety in connection with one state (social isolation or abandonment) with anxiety associated with another state (fear of being seen, aroused by my letter writing to the authorities).
In some sense, or at some level in his personality, Dr. Taub derives satisfaction by imagining my status as rejected, abandoned, or socially isolated; what might be termed his "fantasy of exile" as it pertains to me (regardless of how reality adequate) is the ideational predicate of the act of shunning (or the act of an authoritarian political power in actually exiling or imprisoning) an individual whose acts or statements are viewed as a threat to one's position, status, or the maintenance of one's valued interpersonal relations. What Dr. Taub depicts as a cause/effect analysis ("Your letters to the authorities are an effect of your painful social isolation") is really based on a more primitive notion of causality: "I am embarrassed by your letters, which threaten my status, and I derive satisfaction from the fact that you are lonely and miserable, which is just punishment for your behavior.")
I submit a copy of an excerpt of a letter dated September 6, 1995 that I wrote to a former treating psychiatrist at the George Washington University Medical Center, Dimitrios Georgopoulos, M.D., that is consistent with my analysis. The letter memorializes a psychiatric consultation at which I read to Dr. Georgopoulos a letter that I planned to submit to the Office of U.S. Attorney that detailed inadequacies in my psychiatric treatment. The letter records Dr. Georgopoulos's reaction of anger and agitation, and his gratuitous act of focusing on my social isolation, which I believe was an attempt to abreact his own feelings of embarrassment and narcissistic injury. In effect, Dr. Georgopoulos was saying: "You plan to embarrass me with your letter to the authorities. You threaten my status thereby. I will now focus on your shameful defect, your social isolation. I derive satisfaction by imagining, or fantasizing, your social isolation: it gratifies me to imagine you in the shameful state that your actions may bring to me--shame, abandonment by my superiors, and scorn by my peers."
What is significant for me in these reactions by psychotherapists is the possible relation between the reactions of these mental health professionals and my interpersonal difficulties generally. It is as if Dr. Taub's reaction to me (and that of Dr. Georgopoulos) serves as a model for the difficulties I face socially and in the workplace.
Perhaps we can state as a formula: In any situation in which my presence, behaviors, or statements pose a narcissistic injury to others, those others will discharge that injury by shunning behaviors (that is, actually engage in the behaviors that are only fantasized in the clinical situation by the treating therapist) or engage in attempts to interfere with my valued relations (social or professional). Thus, for example, in a law firm, a coworker who experiences a superior's esteem of me as a narcissistic injury (i.e., a source of jealousy), may discharge or abreact that injury by interfering in some way in my social relations, typically by means of defamation. See, e.g., Spitzer, R.L., et al. DSM-III-R Casebook. A Learning Companion to the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, 3rd ed. (revised) at 197-199 (case report titled "False Rumors") (note that there is a dynamic relationship between the attribution that a person is a homosexual (i.e., a symbolic "castrate") and the act of exiling someone from the community (again, turning that individual into a symbolic "castrate"). A brother-in-law who is jealous of my relationship with my sister may maliciously attempt to depict me to my sister as a potential child molester: a defamation that discharges the narcissistic injury he experiences in relation to me.
It is important to compare the model that underlies Dr. Taub's observations with another model, which assumes a higher level ego differentiation and superego development.
In this alternative model, my letter writing would not be viewed as an effect of my social isolation. Rather, both the letter writing and the social isolation, and social difficulties I experience, would be viewed as equal effects of a harsh, internalized superego. That is, both the letter writing and the social difficulties can be viewed as the effects of my struggle with guilt, inhibition in drive expression, the consequences of an ego capacity to dispense with social support or approval, and a tendency to engage in rebellion, see, e.g., Fernando, J. "The Exceptions: Structural and Dynamic Aspects." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Vol. 52: 17-28 at 21 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997), among other factors.
Put another way, Dr. Taub's analysis, or model, presupposes a lack of ego differentiation and superego development relating to the patient's failure to internalize the parental object. As a consequence the patient is overwhelmed by feelings of painful isolation and shame when denied the comfort of an external parental derivative (or external source of impulse control) and, further, lacks the superego controls to curb his acting out (in the form of letter writing, which abreacts the patient's rage resulting from feelings of abandonment). In this model, the patient's letter writing might be viewed as a derivative of the screams of the lonely infant who yearns to be held by the mother. In terms of superego controls, the focal issue is defects which impair the patient's ability to control impulses, which brings him in conflict with social norms.
The alternative model assumes a high level of ego differentiation and superego development related to the patient's having internalized the parental object, which permits or enables the patient to withstand social isolation or social rejection (that is, enables the patient to avoid shame even in the absence of an external source of impulse control) and enables the patient to express moral outrage, regardless of social disapproval, in intellectualized productions (such as letter writing). In this model, the patient's letter writing might be viewed as a derivative of the behavior of the potentially creative infant who, when left alone, is able to partially decathect the mother and invest libido in fantasy, see Weissman, P. "Psychological Concomitants of Ego Functioning in Creativity." International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 49: 464-469 (1968), as well as reflect the precocity of superego development found in creative persons, see Storr, A. The Dynamics of Creation (New York: Atheneum, 1977). In terms of superego controls, the focal issue is a deeply imbedded, personal system of norms, not influenced by external factors, which may bring the patient in conflict with social norms.
Cf. Results of Psychological Testing Performed by the George Washington University Medical Center Department of Psychiatry, May 1994 at 5: "There is a tendency for him to challenge or denounce social sanctions, to a point where he may lose sight of his own best interest." Cf. Myden, W. "An Interpretation and Evaluation of Certain Personality Characteristics Involved in Creative Production." In: A Rorschach Reader, Sherman, M.H., ed. at 149-167, 164-5 (International Universities Press, Inc., New York: 1960): "One of the factors which loomed large in the difference between [creative subjects and non-creative controls], and not given consideration in psychoanalytic literature, was the sense of psychological role in life. This concept denotes inner tendencies, deeply imbedded in the personality of the subject, not easily modified, which determine nearly all meaningful relationships."
It is interesting to observe that the content of the patient's letters to law enforcement that have posed problems for him typically relate to professional performance, either that of his treating mental health professionals or his employers. The letters seem to carry the message: "You see, this is not right! These people are not meeting the standards of their profession! They are incompetent buffoons. Someone must investigate this!" This suggests the role of the superego in the patient's letter writing: an issue that may, in fact, be related to the patient's inhibitions in practicing the profession in which he trained. (That is, the content of the patient's letters and the patient's failure to practice law may be overdetermined).
An additional issue in the patient's references to violence, which is ignored in Dr. Taub's analysis, is the patient's transformation of his feelings of passive victimization by other persons (that is, the patient's feelings of having been "violated" by others) into active mastery by use of imposture and parody. Unconsciously, the patient feels aggressed upon or "violated" (a passive state), which he masters by suggestions that he is "violent." But the precise active state that the patient assumes is not actual violence or even threats of violence, but parody. The underlying message, once again, is the patient's perception that those who victimize him are fundamentally idiots or buffoons.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
Letter to Psychologist: Lisa Osborne, Ph.D. (1998-1999) 9/9/98
TO: Lisa Osborne
FROM: Gary Freedman
DATE: September 9, 1998
RE: Attached Computer Disk
________________________________
The attached computer disc contains the creative piece that I mentioned at our consultation on Wednesday September 9, 1998.
You may, of course, read or peruse the document, in whole or in part, at your discretion.
FROM: Gary Freedman
DATE: September 9, 1998
RE: Attached Computer Disk
________________________________
The attached computer disc contains the creative piece that I mentioned at our consultation on Wednesday September 9, 1998.
You may, of course, read or peruse the document, in whole or in part, at your discretion.
Letter to Psychologist: Lisa Osborne, Ph.D. (1998-1999) 8/10/98
August 10, 1998
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Lisa Osborne
Community Mental Health Center
Washington, DC 20007
Dear Ms. Osborne:
A previous letter, dated July 27, 1998 and addressed to Dr. Quint, contains a comparison of me with a criminal suspect. This letter shows that there are also several significant parallels between me and Sigmund Freud.
In the case of both subjects (Freud and Freedman) the father's name was Jacob, with all that implies about the development of a possible "Joseph identification."
"[O]ne may tentatively suggest that, given outstanding endowment, when the child's identification is with a historical son-figure who was not burdened by guilt and ambivalence, and when that identification is based on reality factors rather than only on fantasy or like psychic elements--such a combination may be a propitious beginning for later eminence." Eissler, K.R. Talent and Genius at 255 (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1971) (the biblical Joseph, the son of a Hebrew shepherd named Jacob, rose to prominence as Pharaoh's dream interpreter.). Eissler cautions, however, "[s]uch reality identification, if it is not combined with the sort of endowment that is necessary for its crystallization into achievement or success in reality, will, of course, lead to disturbances of a grave nature." Id. at 254 n. 6.
In both cases (Freud and Freedman) the father was in his 40's when the son was born; and the father was considerably older than the mother, with all that these facts may imply about child development;
In both cases the subjects suffered a serious accidental head injury (soft tissue) while toddlers (about age 2« to 3), with all that implies about superego development and father identification;
See Fernando, J. "The Exceptions: Structural and Dynamic Aspects." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Vol. 52: 17-28 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997)). It is believed that serious physical trauma in childhood can affect both superego development and father identification. See Gaensbauer, T. "Work With A Traumatized Toddler." The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Vol. 49: 412-433 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).
In both cases the subjects had difficult relations with a brother-in-law;
In both cases the subjects grew up in a female-dominated household, and both subjects had prominent misogynist qualities;
In both cases the subjects were avid readers of the philosophical works of Friedrich Nietzsche, (an individual whose own intense misogyny can be traced back to a male protest against a female-dominated developmental environment.);
In both cases the subjects had difficult peer relations, were shunned or ridiculed because of their unusual ideas, and were accused of living in "splendid isolation;"
Freud writes in his autobiography: "These first impressions at the University, however, had one consequence which was afterwards to prove important; for at an early age I was made familiar with the fate of being in the Opposition and of being put under the ban of the 'compact majority.' The foundations were thus laid for a certain degree of independence of judgment." Freud, S. "An Autobiographical Study." Standard Edition. Vol. 20: 7-74 (1925).
In both cases the parties analyzed their dreams, and had unusual access to their unconscious mental processes;
In both cases the subjects had an unusual ability to devote extraordinary energy to detailed, and sometimes monotonous, tasks;
Eissler writes about Freud: "The late Professor Gicklhorn . . . spoke in the most glowing terms about the incredible feat of the young [Freud]--the fact that he dissected 400 eels. Professor Gicklhorn assured me that no person inexperienced in the field could possibly have an adequate notion of what such an accomplishment means, in terms of endurance, zeal and self-discipline." Eissler at 275.
A former supervisor of mine wrote: "Gary is an invaluable, dedicated and highly-motivated individual who takes pride in his work and seems to thrive on heavy volume. Gary recently trained and supervised five temporary coders who were brought in to expedite the coding of some 200,000 pages of document production. In doing so, he inspired the group who were always eager to work and adopted Gary's own sense of commitment to the case." Freedman v. Dept. Human Rights, D.C. Court of Appeals no. 96-CV-961, record on appeal at 222.
In both cases the subjects feared that their writings about a father-figure would subject them to reprisal by governmental authorities, and both parties were compulsive letter writers. (Freud wrote upward of 35,000 letters. Reppen, J. "Memory and Archives: A London Conference." The American Psychoanalyst, 28(3): 24 (1994)).
Freud wrote, concerning a book about the prophet Moses (a father figure) that he was working on: "one must not allow oneself to slight the truth in behalf of supposed national interests." Freud's biographer adds: "He had found it painful enough to have Austrian politicians cow him into even temporary silence." Gay, P. Freud: A Life for Our Time at 633 (New York: W.W. Norten, 1988).
In the 1930's Freud co-authored with U.S. Ambassador William Bullitt a book about former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. Publication of the book was postponed until 1966, after Bullitt's death, because of concerns that statements in the book about a U.S. President might lead to reprisals against Bullitt. See Freud, S. and Bullitt, W. Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study (1966) (New York: Avon Books, 1968). The publisher describes the book as "Freud's most controversial work, withheld from publication for more than thirty years."
In both cases intense male friendships were prominent features of the respective subjects' interpersonal relations, with all that implies about the subjects' respective father identifications.
See Blos, P. "Freud and the Father Complex." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Vol. 42: 425-441 at 431-32 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987)
In both cases the subjects developed a professional relationship with a U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union;
Freud developed a close working relationship with William Bullitt, the first U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union; Freud and Bullitt collaborated on a book about President Woodrow Wilson, and it was Bullitt who was instrumental in securing the safe release of Freud and his immediate family from Nazi-occupied Austria, in 1938.
During the period June 1988 to October 1991 I was employed at the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, whose founding partner, Robert S. Strauss, Esq., withdrew from the partnership in August 1991 to assume the post of U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Strauss was fated to be the last U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union; the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991, whereupon Strauss assumed the position of U.S. Ambassador to the successor state, the Russian Federation.
In the case of Freud high-ranking individuals in the U.S. State Department brought personal matters relating to Freud to the attention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
"It was of even more consequence that William Bullitt, now American Ambassador to France, closely watched over his old coauthor [i.e., Freud]. The American consul general in Vienna, John Cooper Wiley, who had been appointed at Bullitt's instance, was on call as his agent in place. . . . On March 15, [1938] Wiley cabled the American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, "Fear Freud, despite age and illness, in danger." Hull passed the message on to President Franklin Roosevelt, and noted on the following day that "in accordance with the President's instructions," he had requested the American ambassador in Berlin, Hugh Robert Wilson, "to take [the matter of Freud's emigration from Austria] up personally and informally with the appropriate German authorities; " [Hugh Robert] Wilson was to try arranging for the Freud family to go to Paris, "where the President is informed friends are anxious to receive him." Gay at 623-4.
_______________________________________________
To assert that simply because I share a few similarities with a criminal suspect, see letter to Dr. Quint dated July 27, 1998, that I may have criminal propensities may be as absurd as asserting that simply because I share a few similarities with Sigmund Freud that perhaps it is possible that a former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union (Robert S. Strauss, Esq.) and his law partner, Vernon Jordan, have brought personal matters relating to me to the attention of President Clinton. Now, isn't that ridiculous? Do you really think President Clinton knows anything about my friends, just as President Roosevelt knew about Freud's friends? That's simply not credible.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
3801 Connecticut Avenue, NW
#136
Washington, DC 20008-4530
Lisa Osborne
Community Mental Health Center
Washington, DC 20007
Dear Ms. Osborne:
A previous letter, dated July 27, 1998 and addressed to Dr. Quint, contains a comparison of me with a criminal suspect. This letter shows that there are also several significant parallels between me and Sigmund Freud.
In the case of both subjects (Freud and Freedman) the father's name was Jacob, with all that implies about the development of a possible "Joseph identification."
"[O]ne may tentatively suggest that, given outstanding endowment, when the child's identification is with a historical son-figure who was not burdened by guilt and ambivalence, and when that identification is based on reality factors rather than only on fantasy or like psychic elements--such a combination may be a propitious beginning for later eminence." Eissler, K.R. Talent and Genius at 255 (New York: Quadrangle Books, 1971) (the biblical Joseph, the son of a Hebrew shepherd named Jacob, rose to prominence as Pharaoh's dream interpreter.). Eissler cautions, however, "[s]uch reality identification, if it is not combined with the sort of endowment that is necessary for its crystallization into achievement or success in reality, will, of course, lead to disturbances of a grave nature." Id. at 254 n. 6.
In both cases (Freud and Freedman) the father was in his 40's when the son was born; and the father was considerably older than the mother, with all that these facts may imply about child development;
In both cases the subjects suffered a serious accidental head injury (soft tissue) while toddlers (about age 2« to 3), with all that implies about superego development and father identification;
See Fernando, J. "The Exceptions: Structural and Dynamic Aspects." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Vol. 52: 17-28 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1997)). It is believed that serious physical trauma in childhood can affect both superego development and father identification. See Gaensbauer, T. "Work With A Traumatized Toddler." The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Vol. 49: 412-433 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1994).
In both cases the subjects had difficult relations with a brother-in-law;
In both cases the subjects grew up in a female-dominated household, and both subjects had prominent misogynist qualities;
In both cases the subjects were avid readers of the philosophical works of Friedrich Nietzsche, (an individual whose own intense misogyny can be traced back to a male protest against a female-dominated developmental environment.);
In both cases the subjects had difficult peer relations, were shunned or ridiculed because of their unusual ideas, and were accused of living in "splendid isolation;"
Freud writes in his autobiography: "These first impressions at the University, however, had one consequence which was afterwards to prove important; for at an early age I was made familiar with the fate of being in the Opposition and of being put under the ban of the 'compact majority.' The foundations were thus laid for a certain degree of independence of judgment." Freud, S. "An Autobiographical Study." Standard Edition. Vol. 20: 7-74 (1925).
In both cases the parties analyzed their dreams, and had unusual access to their unconscious mental processes;
In both cases the subjects had an unusual ability to devote extraordinary energy to detailed, and sometimes monotonous, tasks;
Eissler writes about Freud: "The late Professor Gicklhorn . . . spoke in the most glowing terms about the incredible feat of the young [Freud]--the fact that he dissected 400 eels. Professor Gicklhorn assured me that no person inexperienced in the field could possibly have an adequate notion of what such an accomplishment means, in terms of endurance, zeal and self-discipline." Eissler at 275.
A former supervisor of mine wrote: "Gary is an invaluable, dedicated and highly-motivated individual who takes pride in his work and seems to thrive on heavy volume. Gary recently trained and supervised five temporary coders who were brought in to expedite the coding of some 200,000 pages of document production. In doing so, he inspired the group who were always eager to work and adopted Gary's own sense of commitment to the case." Freedman v. Dept. Human Rights, D.C. Court of Appeals no. 96-CV-961, record on appeal at 222.
In both cases the subjects feared that their writings about a father-figure would subject them to reprisal by governmental authorities, and both parties were compulsive letter writers. (Freud wrote upward of 35,000 letters. Reppen, J. "Memory and Archives: A London Conference." The American Psychoanalyst, 28(3): 24 (1994)).
Freud wrote, concerning a book about the prophet Moses (a father figure) that he was working on: "one must not allow oneself to slight the truth in behalf of supposed national interests." Freud's biographer adds: "He had found it painful enough to have Austrian politicians cow him into even temporary silence." Gay, P. Freud: A Life for Our Time at 633 (New York: W.W. Norten, 1988).
In the 1930's Freud co-authored with U.S. Ambassador William Bullitt a book about former U.S. President Woodrow Wilson. Publication of the book was postponed until 1966, after Bullitt's death, because of concerns that statements in the book about a U.S. President might lead to reprisals against Bullitt. See Freud, S. and Bullitt, W. Thomas Woodrow Wilson: A Psychological Study (1966) (New York: Avon Books, 1968). The publisher describes the book as "Freud's most controversial work, withheld from publication for more than thirty years."
In both cases intense male friendships were prominent features of the respective subjects' interpersonal relations, with all that implies about the subjects' respective father identifications.
See Blos, P. "Freud and the Father Complex." In: The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child. Vol. 42: 425-441 at 431-32 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1987)
In both cases the subjects developed a professional relationship with a U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union;
Freud developed a close working relationship with William Bullitt, the first U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union; Freud and Bullitt collaborated on a book about President Woodrow Wilson, and it was Bullitt who was instrumental in securing the safe release of Freud and his immediate family from Nazi-occupied Austria, in 1938.
During the period June 1988 to October 1991 I was employed at the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld, whose founding partner, Robert S. Strauss, Esq., withdrew from the partnership in August 1991 to assume the post of U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union. Strauss was fated to be the last U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union; the Soviet Union was dissolved in December 1991, whereupon Strauss assumed the position of U.S. Ambassador to the successor state, the Russian Federation.
In the case of Freud high-ranking individuals in the U.S. State Department brought personal matters relating to Freud to the attention of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.
"It was of even more consequence that William Bullitt, now American Ambassador to France, closely watched over his old coauthor [i.e., Freud]. The American consul general in Vienna, John Cooper Wiley, who had been appointed at Bullitt's instance, was on call as his agent in place. . . . On March 15, [1938] Wiley cabled the American Secretary of State, Cordell Hull, "Fear Freud, despite age and illness, in danger." Hull passed the message on to President Franklin Roosevelt, and noted on the following day that "in accordance with the President's instructions," he had requested the American ambassador in Berlin, Hugh Robert Wilson, "to take [the matter of Freud's emigration from Austria] up personally and informally with the appropriate German authorities; " [Hugh Robert] Wilson was to try arranging for the Freud family to go to Paris, "where the President is informed friends are anxious to receive him." Gay at 623-4.
_______________________________________________
To assert that simply because I share a few similarities with a criminal suspect, see letter to Dr. Quint dated July 27, 1998, that I may have criminal propensities may be as absurd as asserting that simply because I share a few similarities with Sigmund Freud that perhaps it is possible that a former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union (Robert S. Strauss, Esq.) and his law partner, Vernon Jordan, have brought personal matters relating to me to the attention of President Clinton. Now, isn't that ridiculous? Do you really think President Clinton knows anything about my friends, just as President Roosevelt knew about Freud's friends? That's simply not credible.
Sincerely,
Gary Freedman
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