Poor Chris, Old Chris, Go Away Chris

So I have a reasonable discussion with my former friend Chris C.   I am very fond of Chris.  He has contributed many things to my life.  But he tends to have what I think of as "psychotic breaks" directed at me.  We talk, he stews, and next morning he lets fly his mighty hammer.  "What a bad person you are", he says to me. "You must go away and never talk to me again".

I am not sure what causes this but I suspect it has to do with his obsession with psychotherapy and the fact that I reject it as pseudoscience.  So he takes something I say to mean that I renounce my old beliefs and accept psychotherapy as the true path and then is infuriated when he discovers that this is not the case.

I just dont like being zapped by lightning bolts after listening to him complain all night.

We must do a better job of choosing friends.

People tell me that the visual effects industry is filled with weird and competitive assholes.  Maybe that is true, or maybe it is just an unfortunate sample from a larger group of nice(r) people.

Therapy and the Winter Soldier

draft

Not everyone appreciates the great depth and intelligence that can be found beneath the surface of the Marvel Cinematic portrayal of comic book superheroes, and its faithful and wry discussion of the many contradictions of our civilization as portrayed by Iron Man, Captain America, Thor and so forth. The latest MCU Disney + series (The Falcon and the Winter Soldier) has the setup that the Winter Soldier (a nice guy who was forced/programmed to be an assassin during the cold war) has to see a therapist as a condition of his parole.

I think it is completely hilarious and I so relate since I also have PTSD and really do not see much point about talking about it with a therapist.

Value of a Psychiatrist in our Late Capitalist Society

A friend, who is aware of the stress I am going through, suggested I go see a psychiatrist he knows down here. The good news is that my friend wants to help. The bad news are the details, so lets go through it.

I think my friend knows all this, by the way.

The short version is to skip to item 10.

1. The doctor he recommends is an adult psychopharmacologist, I already have a psychopharmacologist. About six months ago, I was thinking of changing, but now I plan to stick with the one I have until I leave the area at the end of the year. (This particular recommended psychopharmacologist is also semi-retired and expensive).

2. Psychopharmacologists are good for one thing, prescribing drugs, period. My psychopharmacologist already prescribes the maximum of the drugs I intend to take. (Note: I would take more if I could, but I cant, so I have to deal with that).

3. There is a more general kind of shrink called “a therapist”. Some of them can prescribe drugs, some dont. In my experience, they are useful for one thing: the rent-a-pal phenomenon. When you talk to a shrink once a week, you tend to lean less on your friends for moral support. This is valuable! But time consuming and expensive.

4. Doctors cost money. I dont have the money to spare.

5. The money could be spent on many other things, like travelling to Sf to see an ex girl friend. That might cheer me up more than any doctor.

6. The problems I deal with at this time of life comes from trauma experienced in my 30s and afterwards. That trauma results in anxiety attacks today when I am not in control of where I live or how I am going to afford to live.

7. Therefore, if you want to help, and my friends do want to help, you should listen and say something cheerful, or (this is much more difficult....) you should help me find a job, or arrange for a place for me to live, or give me money or introduce me to someone who can. Unfortunately, that is easier said than done, especially in today's world.

8. We live in a corrupt, late-capitalist society. Money is necessary to solve problems. Shrinks are a tool which used judiciously, can be helpful. But, like lawyers, they are not a panacea and they run on money. At the end of the day, money may not buy happiness, but money, or a steady job, or both, will buy stability and some satisfaction. This is not the only path but it is a good one and very straightforward.

9. I recognize that most people can not provide this help for their friends, or when they do, only in very limited amounts. I have sampling error here. There was a time when I could give people jobs, two different times in fact, but those times are past for me and may have never existed for my friends. Your good wishes and thoughts are appreciated.

10. But the biggest mistake here is to think that doctors are good for anything and the patient knows nothing, even after a life time of dealing with this.

11. Send money!  Just kidding, sortof.  Thank you!

Previously Discredited Treatment for Depression Shows Amazing Success in Trials

Millions of right thinking Americans have depression but in spite of years of therapy and the prolonged use of various anti-depressants, a large proportion of those who suffer do not respond to treatment or respond only in a limited way. But now an obscure therapy first pioneered by a radical fringe group of doctors in Queens, NY has been found to have an unprecedented success rate of over 80% in the group of patients that previously did not respond to therapy.

“We are completely astonished,” said Dr. Irving Bloomworth of the Institute for the Prevention of Mental Disorders, whose headquarters is located in Falmouth,  NY. “As part of reviewing old and discredited approaches to treating depression, we came across this approach from the 1930s. We felt that there may have been some procedural mistakes in the trials back then and that it was worth trying again. But we never expected this kind of success.”

In a multiyear experiment funded by the NIH, several different groups of subjects were assigned either the therapy in question or a placebo. Those who received the actual therapy were given paper sacks filled with large amounts of money. The control group received paper sacks filled with old copies of the NY Post "Page Six" column.  

“We noticed a striking improvement in the mood and functionality of the people who received the sacks of money,” said Dr. Bloomworth in a press conference yesterday. "Those who received the placebo were mildly amused but the effect did not last long. But those who received large sacks of cash not only reported feeling better, that feeling seemed to persist for long periods of time."

"As a doctor, someone who wants to heal the sick, I was very gratified when some of the selected group, people who had been depressed and stuck in life for years, suddenly began to have new hope and solve problems that they previously thought were unsolvable.  The depression seemed to disappear as if by magic when they could just throw money at a problem". 

"The mistake we noticed in the original experiments in the 1930s was that they limited the amount of money involved to less than $100.   Of course, $100 was worth a lot more back then, but even so this caught our eye.  What if they had simply not been using enough cash, we wondered.  We created an experiment that gave out money in the 10s of thousands of dollars and we immediately saw an amazing improvement in the quality of life of the subjects as well as an improvement in their attitude towards problem solving."

One limitation of the technique is that the subjects must be allowed to keep the money, doctors discovered.  When they took the money away again, the subjects reported that the depression immediately returned and brain scans confirmed this.  Those who had received the NY Post, on the other hand, were not much affected one way or another when the popular newspaper was taken away.

The therapy was seen to be enhanced by post-care care in which the recipients received help with accounting, investment and taxation.  Tellingly, only those who actually received sacks of money responded to this care.  Those who received the placebo, the NY Post related material, were not affected one way or another by the contributions of an outside accountancy firm.

“This is a very exciting, possibly breakthrough approach,” said Dr. Fremkin at the NYU Medical School who was not involved in the study. “But we must not rush to judgment, many more studies must be done before we just start handing out sacks of money to depressed people”.

Followon large scale trials are being planned.


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Notes:

National Institutes of Health

www.nih.gov

National Institute of Mental Health on Depression

http://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/topics/depression/index.shtml

Page Six at the NY Post

http://pagesix.com/

Is Writing A Blog a Form of Therapy?

Before we go further, I want you to know what I think about psychotherapy, sometimes called talk therapy, sometimes called psychoanalysis although not as commonly today. I think it is mostly an entertaining mistake from the early part of last century, one part scam, one part Jewish intellectual disease, one part self-deception. (1) I have friends who are the children of very successful psychoanalysts and who have been in therapy all their lives and clearly it hasn't helped.

There are many kinds of therapy of course, and the kind I am being dismissive of is the one in which the patient talks about his life and the doctor concludes that the patient is hostile because he secretly wants to have sex with his mother.

But keeping an open mind, when I was in NY and consulting for Viacom, I decided to give it a try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Besides, I had as close as I was going to ever have to a steady income, so now was the time.

A great scene from the President's Analyst (1967) right before he confesses to killing the Albanian.

Anyway, I tried it for a year and did get some benefit out of it although I did not realize at first what was going on. What happened is that I noticed that when I saw the therapist, I leaned less on my friends. I live alone and so other than talking to myself, the only way I can release certain kinds of stress, to share as it were, is to talk to my friends. I suspect my friends find this tiresome.  But when I was in therapy I noticed that because I could spew once a week at my therapist, that I did not do it as much to my friends and in fact that I was also a bit less neurotic in the workplace.

Apparently this benefit is sometimes called “Rent a Pal” and is not unique to me.  One is still as fucked up as before, may have as many neurosis or unrealized desires to have kinky sex or whatever, but at least one is not as compelled to blab about it to your long-suffering friends.

I wonder whether I am getting a similar benefit from writing this blog? In writing many of these posts, I get my entertainment by trying to find an amusing way to beat the shit out of things, events, concepts or people that annoy me. 

 I am in touch with my feelings so there are a lot of things that annoy me.

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1. There was a period of time, perhaps the 1950s or so, when between three apostate Jews we were able to fuck up nearly everybody in the world. The three of course were Jesus, Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud. Technically, Jesus was an apocalyptic rabbi, and not really apostate.

Introducing "Lithic Fragmentation"

Lithic Fragmentation is a bold new therapy designed to reclaim the lives of otherwise worthless human refuse who have fallen into shame and degradation. These poor dregs of former human life, forced to endure their hundreds of millions of dollars of unearned wealth, or to exercise their power as leading yet corrupt members of our society, now have a way to correct the course of their formerly pointless lives and learn new and better skills.

The process of Lithic Fragmentation is simple yet subtle. It begins with the therapy candidate being volunteered by their fellow citizens in local "therapy committees" where suitable candidates are proposed, discussed and elected, all without the concern or knowledge of the potential therapy receiver. We do this for their own good and we have no doubt that they appreciate all the effort that is expended on their behalf.

The therapy process continues with the transfer of all their wealth to the therapy centers. This totally voluntary wealth transfer, which is provided for them at no cost and without them having to do anything, is the second part of their therapy. By receiving their ill-gotten wealth, we selflessly take on the burden, and the therapy receivers immediately experience a great sense of relief at not having the guilt associated with their ill-gotten and undeserved riches.  Already the therapy receivers can sense a great improvement in their lives.

Before we get to the core of the therapy, the patient is relocated to special centers which are dedicated to this work.   These centers are located in beautiful parts of our great country such as Death Valley or the Jornada del Muerto.  Each patient is given their own private suite with bed and private bath and a view of the stark yet beautiful countryside.  In order to foster a serious feeling of dedication, they are given new clothes for their stay which are simple, comfortable and distinctive with fashionable black stripes on a white background.

Every day at dawn, our therapy receivers are led to a new location, filled with big rocks. There, armed with only a simple hammer, the therapy recipient proceeds to turn big rocks into small ones, hence the term "Lithic Fragmentation".  Oh, how happy they will be as they realize that for the first time in their lives they are doing something productive with their own two hands!  How eagerly they will return each day for the pleasant 12 or 16 hours of daily exercise outside and in nature continuing this process!  With each rock that they fragment, they will experience a great sense of pride and feeling of accomplishment!  No more a life of shame for these lucky men and women!

And there is other symbolism as well. That big chain that connects them to their fellow therapy receiver? That is the "great chain of being" that reminds them that we are all connected on this planet, and have a responsibility to each other, unlike their former, disgusting lives before therapy.

At the end of the day, the happy fragmenters return to their individual cells and receive a healthy bowl of soup and a solid 4-6 hours of sleep before the next day of self-improvement begins.

There are other aspects to this therapy that are used to enrich the lives of the therapy receivers. For example, therapy providers "Jerome" and "Big Julie" give private and personalized therapy to worthy candidates, all of whom report a unique and transforming experience.   In addition, the therapy receivers can look forward to regular sessions of group discussion in which they criticize their prior lives and actions in a spirit of honesty and sincere desire to reform. Usually one therapy receiver in particular is the subject of this therapeutic group criticism.

After an all too brief period of self-improvement, rarely more than 10 or 12 years except in special cases, the happy fragmenter returns to the world, a changed and much better person, and with a prestigious certificate to indicate successful completion of the course.  

Here is a picture of happy therapy receivers awaiting a personal session with Jerome and Big Julie.