Footnote to Dreams of Psychiatry
It was gratifying to read these pages after 40 years and to feel that, indeed, that was myself, my very own mind at work. And 40 years later I agree with myself: We still do not know how to take care of those with mental illness; we still don’t know how to take care of our children, and we still don’t know what to do about sex and violence.
About humane treatment
For a time I toyed with writing something about the Moral Treatment of Insanity, a Quaker project of the 18th Century. Then I read Rose Tremain’s lovely historical novel, Restoration (1989) and saw the equally wonderful 1995 film of the book. These works tell us everything essential about that movement and its as yet unfulfilled promise. In the 21st century the problem with psychiatric treatment is not so much that it is in-humane as that it is non-existent. No one seems to connect this non-existence of care with such problems as school shootings, homelessness, opiate overdoses, overcrowded prisons, etcetera. But they are connected.
About perfect children
I never cease to be amazed by the quantity and quality of careful caring which my children provide to my grandchildren. It is significantly beyond anything that we could manage back in the 20th century. Nonetheless, our ragtag kids grew up to be very nice humans. We will see how this new method works. In my practice I see “failure to launch”young adults who seem not to have benefitted from intensive parenting.
About the drives: Greed, Lust and Violence
Still with us. I find it funny that I mentioned Fromm-Reichmann and Bettelheim as clinicians who seemed to me at that time fearless in the face of these powerful drives. Of course Fromm-Reichmann married her patient. She stopped the analysis first; “That much sense we had,” she would say later. Only at around the turn of this century did psychoanalysis condemn marrying one’s patient once you fell in love with them. Previously, I guess, it had seemed the honorable thing to do. And Bettelheim was denounced for blowing up at his disturbed little patients and at times physically disciplining them. Not until the 1990’s did the state of Texas forbid corporal punishment in the school; even then it was a parental option to allow your child to be spanked by school personnel. So, maybe, progress?