July 13, 2015 · 8:49 am

Testament

Time for another review and a tie-in to…something. Recently saw Testament and Youth, a film apparently released worldwide last fall, but only recently making it to Bay Area theaters. The film is based upon a First World War memoir of the same name by Vera Brittain. Swedish actress Alicia Vikander plays the historical figure, a suffragette and then later, a pacifist. That pacifism comes later is one of the story’s tragic themes. Vera is born into a well-to-do family in rural Britain, headed by a stern, if decent paternalist (played by Dominic West), and mothered by a prim yet henish character played by Emily Watson. Opening scenes feature Vera as a petulant but gifted daughter, angry at her father for buying her a piano for her birthday, with money that should have been allocated for an Oxford education. He exasperates over her ingratitude. She despairs that chauvinistic men, however benevolent, will never listen. Vera wants the world to listen. She is poetic, ambitious of becoming a writer, envious of her brother and his two friends, a triumvirate of carefree maleness.

Vera spends her spare time in their company as often as possible, partly because they are charming and fun, but more importantly, because theirs are privileged and coveted lives. Her brother, in particular, is a cheerful saint: advocating for his sister, he insists that their father allow Vera to “sit” for entrance exams at her dream college, Oxford. The father reluctantly agrees, and Vera passes the requisite exam, despite flightily overlooking instructions to write her essays in Latin and not German, which she has prophetically learned as a child. She returns home, initially discouraged, thinking she has failed in her dream. However, the head mistress who oversees admissions appears to like Vera, saying she has an “original mind”. Indeed she does, though following events reveal her to be as naive–and in some ways traditionalist–as anyone.

It is 1914 and war is breaking out. The young men of the towns and villages are signing up for military duty, gleeful at the chance to serve, plus believing the villainous Kaiser will be vanquished in no time. Vera’s father, however patriotic he may be, is nonetheless anxious about allowing his only son to fight, but Edward (Vera’s brother) is determined to serve, and Vera, reciprocating Edward’s earlier support of her, exhorts her father to “let him be a man”. It’s an interesting passage in the film, and surely also in the original memoir, for it betrays a likely truism: that while many women challenged the status quo with respect to their social roles, fewer sought to challenge the mores that led men to slaughter. BTW: it’s known that most notable suffragettes, like Emmeline Pankhurst for example, supported the war and recruitment efforts, and even suspended their violent campaign for voting rights. Vera Brittain was on the periphery of this movement, it seems, but in the story is more concerned with her education. She is concerned about the war because it would separate her from her brother, and in particular, because it steals away the emerging love of her life, Edward’s friend Roland.

The middle portion of the film introduces everyone to the horrors of war, firstly by revealing the shellshocked detachment of Edward and Roland when they return home on leave. Roland in particular seems distant and angry, often snapping at Vera, impatient with her innocence. He recovers his loving nature sufficiently in order to propose marriage, but of course the wedding never happens. Roland is killed in France soon after, a year into hostilities. Grieving but galvanized, Vera abandons college, signs up to be a nurse, first on home soil, treating returning soldiers, then later on the front lines, in France. Initially, her challenge is to overcome the severity of her nursing supervisors, the grudging attitudes of her peers, who smell Oxford elitism upon her. But Vera is resilient, tough, and above all truth-seeking, which eventually wins her admirers. Most powerful is a scene in which she has sought out the commander of Roland’s former unit. Bravely, she penetrates the commander’s consoling platitudes and learns the full truth of her fiance’s dying ordeal.

It’s another turning point in the story, which plunges further into the horror of war, sparing no one the grisly details. On the front lines, Vera treats the maimed and the dying with increasing maturity but diminishing hope, all the while maintaining a grim hold on reality. One after another, characters perish. Finally, and inevitably, Vera learns that her brother Edward has also fallen victim. At this point it is 1917, just before the end of the war. On Armistice day, she wades through a crowd of revelers, unable to join in celebrations, for everyone she has loved is either dead or has been broken irrevocably. At her home in the countryside, her mother dithers, a shadow of her once vital self. She is unable to get out of bed. Her father is quiet, at times sobbing–a lonely, depressed man. The film’s climax is a town hall meeting: Vera takes the stage and shouts down a raucous crowd which is protesting the notion that Germany might receive any leniency in post war negotiations. She displays her credentials, her irrefutable losses, but recounts the moment in which her knowledge of German was put to good use. It was a death scene: one in which she hovers over a dying “Hun”, apparently taking in a confession that fights against the man’s final breaths. In the meeting, unlike the earlier scene, Vera discloses the content of the man’s thoughts: a plea for forgiveness from a former sweetheart; a moment of redemption that equalizes friends and enemies.

Vera’s memoirs, written in sequence in the post-war years, were a testament to the realities of war, highlighting the ways in which women are changed by war.

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July 6, 2015 · 7:47 am

On to the next thing

As I move from one writing project to the next–roughly one book per year–it’s hard to maintain the pretense that I’m committed to any project for any length of time. Months after they’re done, I find it’s hard to keep the stories alive in my mind, there to be nurtured, developed until growing legs and walking on their own. It’s as if they were like children birthed and then given away, never to be seen again. There: how’s that for belaboring a maternity metaphor (and using the word ‘labor’ to boot), and then spicing it up with a hint of surrogacy.

For my next novel, I’ve decided to do things differently. This time I’ll get a head start upon my own jadedness and write blog essays well ahead of publication. With Crystal From The Hills and The Situation, one story stretched over five years (of my time, that is), commentary began upon the eve of release, which in retrospect seems neither here nor there, as crickets were the sounds that greeted those books’ arrivals. Meanwhile, I’m currently taking Working Through Rehab on a mini tour of book readings, following an unexpected positive review in The Therapist magazine. For Blocked (the working title of my next piece), I don’t necessarily expect a better reception, by which I simply mean more reactions. Actually, I might be content to fly completely under the radar.

Or the search engine analysis. That’s a fragment from one the book’s opening gags: a allusion to metaphors changing alongside technology. Do you like it? I hope so (sort of), as clever plays upon words are part of the new book’s intended appeal–a function of my seeking a voice that would convey attitude but do so with mischief. That’s my way of saying that Blocked will require a sense of humor, because that’s what its characters use to get by in life. It’s kind of a Breaking Bad sort of thing. I notice that dark humor is well rewarded these days, by an audience and/or readership with whom I feel increasingly out of touch, though I can take a hint as to what it wants. How do I know I’m out of touch? I don’t. I just sit in an office day after day listening to people, so how should I know what’s happening in the world.

So why should I try, or dare, to write a social satire? Oh God, it’s not a social commentary book, is it? That’s not what I think you’re thinking. However, it is what certain friends and colleagues–people who don’t read this blog–may think. Or, they may like the idea of a book of commentary, but would gently suggest I dispense with fiction, and include tables and graphs, plus a fuller reconnaissance as to what readers want to know. I could do that and within a year produce a volume entitled Finding Love Through Secure Attachment, or something, starring an exposition of mirror neurons and a glib pronouncement we can re-wire ourselves with healthy experiences, which I find unconvincing actually. Anyway, such a book would be not just positive, as people like to say, but also promissory, and instructive.

Perhaps I will be content to entertain, and possibly shock. Oh, how I’d love to shock, though I don’t think I will. It’s too hard when you don’t know enough. Still, my story features some chestnut themes of mine, stuff that will resonate with some readers, bore others: the oppressive nature of systems; the banality of modern communication; the obscuring truth by apathy and social momentum. Added to those are headline issues, mostly to do with sex, which my writing has only flirted with so far (there’s another play). Significant things are happening in the world to do with sex, so it’s about time I added my two cents, blending in oblique fashion the contending views of people like Cordelia Fine and Warren Farrell. This pretense reminds me of something once  written of Jean Luc Godard’s Weekend–that it dramatized with surrealistic glory the contrasting worldviews of Mao Tse Tung and Lyndon Johnson. Excellent. That’s something to emulate, though it would be unlikely for me, because the days of capturing interest with allegorical traffic jams are behind us.

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June 22, 2015 · 8:28 am

The Reading

I was ready for my reading. The first of its kind was to take place before a private little gathering in a semi-lit room, with an overhead projector not working because my friend, a confirmed techno-specialist, didn’t have the right cord to fit my computer, my less-than-a-year old computer. We could head down to the Radio Shack to get the VRG-DHR cord (I don’t know—I can’t remember its actual name) cord that we needed, he offered with enthusiasm.

“Forget it,” I said with mine draining from me.

Whenever I invite friends or family to show up for me, whether it’s for a public event or not, I find that I have to fight impulses towards the negative: a sour, ill-humored cloud that creeps over me, threatening to douse energy and kill joy at the first sign of a setback. It wasn’t so much that I needed the damn laptop presentation anyway. It was leftover from the workshop I’d given six months ago, and was a supplement to a reading of about half a dozen passages from my non-fiction, Working Through Rehab, which I am occasionally hawking to would-be readers through…anyway, I didn’t need the laptop. That was the point. So I had to coach myself to breathe, or more specifically, to issue forth a gust of breath that would dislodge the wad of resistance that would soon form a mass and block my voice. I had to, as they say, get over it. “Whatever,” I said aloud to no one, dismissing early interpretations: that this was a harbinger; a symbolic alert, signaling me to stop what I was doing, sneak out the back door, leaving a note with apologies for everyone’s inconvenience. For the next few minutes, the lull prior to my beginning, I fought gravity’s tug upon my lips, that smile that was turning upside down. People started to arrive, greeting me with pleasure, eager to support this writing thing I did on the side.

“How’re you doin’?” asked my best friend, seeing a cloud over my face.

“Nervous,” I said.

“Drink water,” he advised.

I did. Throughout the talk, whenever I paused to field a question or a comment, I stole a sip from my bottle, and felt buoyant, if nearly drowned after an hour. There weren’t many there—maybe a dozen people, total. But it wasn’t so much how many were there, or even the fact that I was speaking before an audience, sharing passages from my book, and breaking to make comments in between. It was the who that mattered. Speaking to family, friends, plus a crossover of collegial knowing, I imagined deeper judgments, more fraught investment, and a more rigorous, concerned critique: speak louder, someone whispered ironically after five minutes. “You should look at your audience more”, someone else remarked afterwards. I nodded politely and took it in. How do I do that and read? I thought churlishly. The positives made it through the blockade, however. Gathered around me in a circle, the assembled uttered their “good job” pronouncements, their gentle congratulations and other good wishes. One person left early, without comment, which nagged at me for the rest of the evening. “Sorry I had to go,” he texted later. “Had to pick up my kid. Good job.”

You’d think the event was about me, and it was. The book is about drugs, adolescents, their parents, and the people who work with those suffering from drug abuse and addiction. If you check out the image which is the cover of the book, take note of its artful rendition of drug treatment, milieu therapy, and community mental health. Up front there’s me, the author, sat on a time-out device, having left the field, but now raising a thumb in accordance with an old protocol of rehab expression, indicating that I have something to say. To my left is a doctor, or psychiatrist, holding a clipboard, observing from an aloof position the goings on, wondering what prescription(s) may be best. Over my right shoulder, there’s an officious-looking floor counselor, a fledgling member of the mental health army, not yet working with kids in the manner of his/her choosing, monitoring an affectless, acting out, poorly attached and difficult young person who will nonetheless touch hearts. With his back to all of this is a man busy at a console, producing a report, maybe of numbers. But he’s not an accountant. He’s a therapist, or a case manager, as they are euphemistically called in such places. Tellingly, his back is to the scene, thought it’s not by choice. It’s by necessity. This is the business of mental health that I’m talking about, and writing about, and reading aloud. In public.

Meanwhile, that review came, the one I moaned about in my last entry: it arrived finally, and it was pretty good, sort of. The reviewer read between the lines, observed the melancholy, and something of the humor. He or she (it’s not clear) wrote that I was cynical and bitter, though the comment was not a complaint necessarily. This reminds me of something I heard recently and have recycled for patients: if you don’t complain how do you know there’s pain? I don’t mean it to sound like a rap, but there is pain. That’s the melancholy truth of Working Through Rehab. From my point of view and that of other veterans of drug treatment, there isn’t a happy plan in place for the consumer; no all-conquering model for the professional to embrace. Once, there was a working idea: treat the adolescent more or less as an adult, and certainly as an addict. Operate as if a compulsive pattern has gained a foothold, and that strategies for using other human beings in a human way were profoundly offline. Those who thought this weren’t wrong, and most agree the attachment disorders of those in treatment seem pervasive. But disagreements abound as to solutions. Containing the drug user’s behavior is one thing; aiming for motivation, and assessing capacities are the other great tasks, and this is where drug treatment with adolescents–with everyone, frankly–has gotten tricky.

Why? Because increasingly, kids, old and young, think that using drugs, sex, video games, and cell phones are acceptable tools for soothing the attachment disorders which they may agree are present and ongoing. Don’t see this? At least as far as drugs are concerned, read the latest statistics released by The National Institute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) about the opinions of high school seniors. Only 16% consider that use of drugs constitutes an unhealthy risk, compared to 27% who thought this just five years ago. Wake up: self medication is being normalized. This is why treatment centers like Thunder Road are at risk of being closed down; it’s why places like it have already closed down, and why public officials are reaching out to the media, bemoaning the impending lack of options for at risk youth. It’s why drug treatment as it once was may be a thing of the past, except for the wealthy. It’s one of the reasons my book is a little melancholy, and just one of the reasons my reading of it might stir the nerves.

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June 15, 2015 · 6:37 am

The Submission

When I first submitted Working Through for review at the The Therapist, I waited. I waited patiently. Over the previous year, I’d been writing prolifically, completing two books, one a novel whose basic plot I strain to describe in less than a paragraph, but whose themes cover the bases of a therapist’s sphere of influence: addiction, depression, psychosis, and most crucially, the good news: empathy. My other book, my expose of drug treatment and adolescents, fully entitled Working Through Rehab: An Inside Look at Adolescent Drug Treatment, is an ambitious, sprawling memoir cum essay that has been variously thrust at agents, publishers, and indulgent peers, though getting people to read it feels a bit like peeling wet leaves off a driveway in the dead of winter. I take my readers one at a time.

A colleague, a good friend whom I do not shame into reading my material, suggested I take advantage of membership in the statewide association of Marriage and Family Therapists, and submit my non-fiction to its flagship journal, The Therapist. The magazine, which is published quarterly, or thereabouts, features a section in which members can volunteer to read submissions and then provide a review. It seemed like a good idea to take advantage of a service that is a privilege of membership. My friend is good at having ideas that obscure his lack of effort. Anyway, what could I lose? I thought, especially after I’d just waiting six months waiting fruitlessly upon a publisher to study WTR, express enthusiasm for its content, but ultimately reject its content. They don’t publish memoirs of non-famous people, said an executive editor, gratuitously pointing out that I wasn’t famous. Fair enough, I thought. However, he could have told me this earlier, rather than having me wait with bubbling hope that a fantasy writing contract was forthcoming. In the end it was a flat e-mail that delivered the publisher’s verdict—an afterthought, really—by a deputy editor who had forgotten to reply to my last message. A flattering response, “well-written and compelling”, was quickly followed by the word, “unfortunately…” rendering the compliment a consolation.

So I submitted WTR to The Therapist in January 2014, thinking it might be advertised in the next issue, and possibly reviewed in the issue following that (as suggested by the editor). March was the next issue, and my fresh-looking book was there in print, alongside several other titles, looking eager like playful children, but also like bags on an airport carousel waiting to be collected. I was pleasantly anticipating, thinking my book an important work. As far as I could tell, no one else was writing about what really happens in drug treatment, and I feel in my gut that there’s a readership for subject that’s slightly off-center: it’s comprised partly of parents concerned with the impact of drugs upon kids, which is what publishers might presume the book is about. There’s a faction of society that is more broadly concerned with mental health, and with the problems of poorly attached individuals, the famous and non-famous, who are collapsing around us, killing themselves with addictions, violently attacking others in schoolyards and movie theaters, or just plain killing themselves. And there’s a faction of workers in this field, who aren’t necessarily readers, who are slated to work with all these people and somehow help figure out all of their problems: they are therapists, social workers, drug and alcohol counselors, for the most part, and they—not the adolescents or their families, actually—are the heroes of my story.

At least some of them are, and that’s what’s potentially controversial about my book, because it’s not exactly a tribute. You see, I write about some of the things people expect to learn about drug treatment: like what leads kids and their families into drugs and addiction, and how treatment and therapy can help claw them out. But I’m not writing a how-to guide for parents, or any other consumer of the industry. I’m more of a critic of the process; the only kind of critic this business could really have: that of an insider, versus, say, a peripheral insider, such as a policy maker, or even most physicians. I’ve worked several positions within a hospital-based treatment setting, as a counselor and later as a supervisor of therapists. I was a manager of a six-bed group home for teens for three years; a leader of an intensive outpatient program for another three, and have seen patients across several divides in private practice for about twenty years. I’ve tracked the dialogues between the addicted and their families. I’ve been a part of and witnessed the back and forth arguments between patients and helpers, administrators and clinical professionals, and I understand the context of treatment’s limited resources, the conflicts many do not understand. I know the Gordian Knot that is drug addiction and the continuum of drug treatment, and the strained efforts to untie it.

As for the feedback process: I’d written the book, had it appear in black and white, and learned that it was selected by a volunteer to read. Again, I waited. When it didn’t appear in the next issue I sighed and reasoned that the book was long (350 pages) and dense, and was perhaps demanding more time and effort from a committed reader than I’d accounted for. But when a review didn’t appear in the issue after that (another two and half months on), I wondered what was happening. I e-mailed the magazine’s editor, a man who had cheerfully written that WTR had been selected six months earlier, and asked the question. Seeming like the deputy editor of that unnamed publisher, he wrote back that he hadn’t yet received a review from the volunteer, and didn’t know why. With curious incuriosity, he added that I might re-submit a copy such that the book could be advertised again as available for review, and that I might implicitly begin the cycle of waiting all over again. It was: oh yeah, I forgot, followed by an attempt to sweep the matter aside. Waiting and writing: years ago, when I started practicing this pleasing craft, I had no idea there would be this much waiting. What was I submitting myself to? Coolly, I replied to the editor, modeling the curiosity the situation compelled: Was there a problem? Is the volunteer no longer willing or able to provide a review? Did they get bored after reading a chapter and burn the copy? Or were they so engrossed that they couldn’t take their eyes off the material, even when driving, and thus died in a fiery crash. The sheepish editor, to whom I did not share these fantasies, wrote back that he’d pursue my inquiries. A week later, after I again solicited information, he replied that he still had none to give. He vaguely apologized on someone’s behalf, perhaps his own, for being inattentive. He excused the magazine by pointing out that this event—this phenomenon of neglect—seldom happens, and once again invited me to re-submit a copy.

Which I have done, and I am waiting. It is June of 2015: enough time for topical subjects to come and go; happily, or not, addiction isn’t one of them. And as I wait, I will continue to ruminate on my work, and perhaps inflate its importance, thinking that someone is out there waiting to snatch up another copy for review, but then blocking its exposure by abandoning the task. Or maybe I’ll be rewarded for my patience, and my raw message on this subject will be read, perhaps even in numbers, and a fair critique will come back at me finally. In the meantime, I will remind myself that while the culture continues to seek and develop tools for immediate gratification, the writer must endure the slowest, most excruciatingly elusive feedback system ever known.

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May 24, 2015 · 9:24 pm

The Roots of Prejudice

The scarier prejudices are those that don’t recognize themselves, followed closely by those that don’t apologize. The second category, if it is malleable, calls for individuals to see reason, be open to contrary experience, which is difficult enough; that is, hard work for anyone. But challenging such a blockade is still easier than calling out the prejudice that isn’t even understood as one.

There are plenty of words representing ideas that are invoked to protect prejudice. Take the word trauma for example. There’s a word which is used on a regular basis to explain reactions to a past event, or set of events. Look up the diagnosis of PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) in the DSM (diagnostic standards manual of the American Psychiatric Association) and you’ll find reference to numerous symptoms, falling under three sub-headings: re-experience, avoidance, and increased arousal. When an individual is faced with a stressor, he or she experiences flashbacks, bad dreams, the desire to avoid certain places, people; hypervigilance and agitation in stressful situations. When the trigger is the pace of traffic for a car accident survivor, or the turmoil of a returning soldier, then the assessment of trauma seems appropriate, the prescription of avoidance seems natural, even common sense.

But what happens when fear of a stressful event is conflated with fear of the events’ principal figures, especially if those figures represent distinct social groups? Currently, I observe a disturbing trend in my work, as well as in my community: the prerogative to disparage police, lawyers; representatives of “broken” systems, medical and administrative. I notice that when threatened, individuals launch into fierce diatribes, reducing people in these professions to caricatures, while paying thin lip service to the possibility of error (“I know there are some good cops”, said a man I listened to recently). You might think this constitutes that small space for understanding, as I suggested earlier. But I don’t think so. At least, when there is such awareness, it seems fleeting, and more importantly, outwardly-directed—the worry about what others might think, but not so much an integration of feedback.

A broader understanding of trauma, or its cousin prejudice, lies beyond the medical dimension, within the theoretical realm of the unconscious. In asserting this, I am aware of leapfrogging the conscious derivatives of prejudice, that which is attributed to socialization over time. While I don’t dispute the impact of calculated teaching, or “modeling” as it is also dubbed, I rather think that the roots of prejudice lie in a capacity for splitting, as Melanie Klein first conceived (building upon the writings of Freud) in the 20s and 30s, and in the strange vicissitudes of psychic energy, which call for binding. Splitting is a primitive defense: a habitual impulse towards segregating love and hate that is innate, thus creating a template for good and bad, which provides humankind with both a moral lens, but also a harsh, distorting, discriminating eye. Latterly, modern theorists like Masterson devised maps of intrapsychic structure, which delineate the pathways taken as a result of splitting. Within such maps individuals can potentially see who is who (in terms of what is experienced affectively) in the equations of relationships, and begin to question a presumed reality.

Present-day mental health services addresses social prejudice in an oblique way: by urging separation, boundaries; “tools” for people to use, to enable calming, the quickest paths to safety. Ironically, the oblique path is more accessible for the average sufferer; the methods of choice are more utilitarian. They speak past the core traumas, prejudices, leaving well enough alone lest its practitioners offend those who have already fixated on truth. Therein lies some kind of cycle, I think, which is difficult to interrupt. That’s scary also.

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April 16, 2015 · 6:51 pm

Saving Thunder Road

In a recent article in the Contra Costa Times, journalist Malaika Fraley writes that Thunder Road Adolescent Treatment Center in Oakland is scrambling to stay open. She reports that TR’s longtime operator, Summit Medical Center, has been planning to sever ties with the program for two years, due to annual running costs of the residential drug rehab and plus facility in excess of $6 million, yearly deficits of $800,000, and declining admissions. Well, I think that conversation’s been happening for much longer, actually.

I worked at Thunder Road for fifteen years, between 1996 and 2011. I chronicled my time, what I observed, what I think treatment for substance abuse and teens entails, both from a research and personal perspective, in a book I published in 2013, entitled Working Through Rehab. Among other things, I remember that threats to the program’s viability started around 2004, and continued periodically thereafter. When I left TR in 2011, I’d worked most clinical positions in the program, seen various changes to program structure, tweaks of philosophy and methods, etcetera, and held the view that TR had been “scrambling” for some time. I am sympathetic to its latest bid for survival, and for the prospect of retaining “the only program of its kind” for Bay Area, and especially East Bay, Alameda residents.

But what is the meaning of this latest, perhaps most threatening of crises? If the community wants drug treatment for youth; if it believes that drug abuse, gang violence, physical and sexual abuse, child abandonment, are ills damaging the community, where is the ongoing support for programs like Thunder Road? Why were admissions declining? Where is the city leadership, the rally of business sponsorship that would spare a thirty year old institution from this desperate position? At the risk of disparaging efforts that may yet come to fruition, I wonder if there is enough conviction to save Thunder Road; if there exists a muted rejection of drug treatment in the community as a whole.

An overview survey from 2014 by the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) reveals some interesting trends. Use of illicit drugs has generally declined over the past two decades: decreasing use of alcohol, cigarettes, the misuse of prescription pain relievers; stable rates of marijuana use among teens, but perhaps more importantly, changing attitudes about the perceived risk of harm associated with marijuana use. 36% of adolescents say that regular use puts users at great risk compared to 52% just five years ago. In other words, a majority of teens no longer think marijuana use is significantly harmful, which begs the question: what becomes the pretext for treatment, especially a residential admission, if this attitude prevails? Aundrea Brown, who runs Alameda County’s public defender’s juvenile division, states that Thunder Road is an essential placement alternative to juvenile hall (according to the Times article). The Save Thunder Road petition site says something similar. But I suspect many citizens of Alameda, the county that TR now dominantly serves, might reject the implied dichotomy. They’d surely rebut that neither alternative should exist; that a society moving towards legalization of currently illicit drugs, and that deems K2/spice, painkillers, e-cigarettes (according to NIDA, the only major substance whose use is on the rise) as effective, acceptable mood-altering substances, should leave well enough alone.

I hope the county is able to broker financing for a provider (or coalition of providers) to take over care of Thunder Road from Sutter. On balance, I believe what the program brings is a valuable service to the community, though it undoubtedly needs reform. But a broader question needs to be aimed at the community, in schools, churches, within board meetings and without: what do you really want to do about drug use?

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April 7, 2015 · 9:04 pm

My not day in court

It was first supposed to happen on January 30th, but it was canceled the night before. My court appearance, my testimonial witnessing of percipient–that is, merely factual information–which had been compelled by a subpoena sent in the mail versus personally delivered, had been continued; that is, delayed. “Good news” exclaimed an unctuous junior prosecutor. “You can go about your day”. Thanks, I thought. So, the three or four appointments I’d canceled to make way for a hearing that might have happened at any point in a three hour window: I could call all those people back and re-instate their sessions could I? His name is/was Chad, and I never got a chance to pose this flippancy. I have history with guys named Chad. They tend to have girlfriends named Brittany or Saunders.

I hoped this was over, but knew it wasn’t. For the next subpoenaed appearance for the same case, I placed clients on stand-by, telling them I might make it the next day, or I might not. They were all nice and understanding, about which I felt lucky. After all, it doesn’t work in reverse. I have a cancellation policy and can’t operate on the basis of appointments that might happen. Anyway, my situation was unusual, so I deserved the benefit of the doubt, I think. Meanwhile, by this time, I had secured the services of a lawyer through my malpractice insurer, someone who would investigate the trifling details, the dense penal codes that would explain why subpoenas require personal service in some cases and not in others; why summons to some courts call for reimbursement of witness’ time, while others don’t. Above all, I wanted my lawyer to contact the public prosecutor (no longer Chad the second time around, due to a tag-team arrangement in their office, apparently), speak whatever dialect these people speak, and release me from an unnecessary “live” appearance.

It wasn’t that I didn’t care. The whole time this was happening I stayed mindful that my inconvenience would pale in comparison to the troubles of my client. I won’t go into details, partly because of confidentiality, and partly because the nature of his offense might prejudice the reader. Trust me that his incarceration, which continued in another sense throughout this period, was triggered by a technicality, though it stemmed originally, and inevitably, from matters relating to sex. So it was a criminal matter, and half-beknownst to me, criminal courts have more authority than civil ones. I was an unpaid servant at their beckon call, I guess, but it still didn’t make sense. I’d dealt with criminal courts in the past, in different contexts, often writing them letters which detailed the elements of treatment, percipient and not. But all the prosecutor wanted in this case was the basics of attendance; nothing else?

My lawyer didn’t buy it, but pledged to get to the bottom of the matter. She figured that live cross examination would begin with percipient questions, when and how often my client had attended therapy, but would then slip in questions calling for opinions, hoping to slide past the complications of an agreed upon expert testimony. However, much to my lawyer’s surprise, the DA stuck to the official position, insisting upon percipient information alone and adding that second hand information (reported by probation via my reports to them) was “unreliable”.

Interesting. Had a P.O. lost the reports? Were they shooting from the hip in response to questions? The competence of law enforcement was quietly in question, while I, and especially my client, would bear the burden, it seemed.

The second appearance was also continued. This time I got two hours notice, which was obviously too late for my clients to accommodate. On the back of this irrefutably unfair event, I was granted permission to write a more thorough letter, supplementing attendance reports with sign-in sheets, thus excusing me from court following a third subpoena for a hearing now past. My client’s still in jail, his program needlessly interrupted, which is a sadly common event for those mandated into care.

http://www.stopAB1775.org

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March 15, 2015 · 4:24 am

A Distrust of Heroes

I hadn’t expected Birdman to win best picture. Seriously, I thought American Sniper had a chance, plus the films about Stephen Hawking, Alan Turing, Martin Luther King. I thought Boyhood might win, partly because of its original idea: the filming of a child’s coming of age, shot intermittently over the actual period of growth for the child–12 years. The other reason had to do with heroism, the type of heroism assigned to parents contending with everyday realities, stressors, over time. The film seems to appeal to a mass audience looking for itself on the big screen; a validation of all that’s difficult in life. And this seems to me a prerequisite quality for widely accepted, as in successful popular art.

Not so much, according to the academy voters, much to my surprise. Of the best picture nominees, Birdman wasn’t the only film without a chance of winning as far as I was concerned. The others were Whiplash (my favorite film of the year, actually), and The Grand Budapest Hotel, which should have won all awards were a strict aesthetic criteria being applied. Prior to the ceremony, about which I had only passing interest, I did not fashion a particular reason for my prejudice, but afterwards observed the ground rules I’d summarily applied. Of all the films nominated, it occurred to me that none of my three non-contenders presented with conventional heroic themes. Grand Budapest Hotel is essentially a comedy and thus didn’t stand a chance of winning best picture. The protagonist of Whiplash appears potentially heroic at the outset of the story. Miles Teller’s manic drummer boy seems quiet and sweet, but soon betrays an obsessive, narcissistic edge which ultimately renders him the equal of his brutal teacher. We cheer for the Andrew Neiman character, but the drama is his own and no one else’s. Meaning, what he does he does for himself. The same is more or less true of Riggan Thomson, the protagonist of Birdman, who adapts a play for the Broadway stage, bravely invests all his money in the production; has left the comfy cash-cow of Hollywood, splitting from the gravy train of a bizarre superhero character. It all sounds winning, if eccentric, but as I watched Michael Keaton and director Inarritu collecting their award, I wondered what fans of the other films were thinking. After all, if your favorite film of the year was about America’s most celebrated civil rights leader, or the greatest scientific mind of his generation, or the man who supposedly cracked a Nazi code and won WWII, or if, more topically, your film recognized the plight of the embattled American soldier overseas fighting terrorism, then you might have looked upon Riggan Thomson and thought, so what.

I felt quietly refreshed, for as a film buff, I peruse the history of Oscar winners over the decades and observe that conventional hero figures usually win the day. But they’re often missing from my list of favorites, because I prefer unlikely heroes, or even protagonists who don’t even seem that way, because most of us don’t. This is why Bryan Tecco, my protagonist of The Situation, had to be a drug dealer and a slob. He had to seem self-absorbed, even callous. Because he goes about his life as most do–trying to get by–his gift to society is what the oligarchs of capitalism intend. It is preordained but stumbled upon, like Bryan’s near drowning at the outset of the novel. It is an accident.

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February 21, 2015 · 8:14 pm

Flight Of Icarus

Woke up feeling light, thought I could fly, went for a jog instead. Stay grounded, I thought. Am I the anti-R Kelly? He’s referenced in the film Birdman, which–it was suggested–I should write about. Therapists, I replied, should write more about films, art in general. So I will.

Riggan Thomson, played by Michael Keaton, sits in his room (levitating, actually), looking like he woke up on the right side, also feeling light, though he is yet to take off. Nor is he grounded exactly. The earth, his world,  seems too constrictive for that. Within moments, his meditation is broken and he is stomping through tight hallways, talking frenetically with anxious producers, a broadway debutante actress, as well as a second actress, his apparently pregnant girlfriend. He is less conversant with his recovering addict daughter Sam, played by cat-eyed Emma Stone, who brings serious chip to her chip-on-the-shoulder role. Thomson is a mess. He is washed up, an ex-superhero star (The Birdman) who now seeks respectability and depth in Hollywood’s darker sibling, the theater. And the culture of theater is less glamorous: it is dirty, claustrophobic, and peopled with either non-entities (the anonymous stage crew), or the impossibly self-absorbed. Thomson at once fits in and doesn’t, but he’s bought in. In fact, he’s invested all he’s got into this play which is an adaptation of a short story by his one-time idol, Raymond Carver. So committed is he that he’s willing to assault, perhaps even kill the mediocre actor who is fucking up rehearsals. In this respect, he is no less driven than the abusive Terrance Fletcher character from Whiplash, though he seems more transparently fragile–insecure, even psychotic.

The Hollywood past doesn’t leave him alone. It stalks him in the form of hallucinations, the Birdman alter-ego whose appearances bring to mind the imaginary friend character of Beautiful Mind, though unlike that film, it’s clear from the outset that Thomson is–what?–at least troubled. But he’s not alone in his craziness, which makes things very interesting. All of the support characters are fucked up also, to more or lesser degrees. One character who seems even crazier than Thomson is Mike Shiner, played by Ed Norton. Shiner is the man Thomson might have been ten years earlier: cocky, gifted, uncontrollable, exhibitionist in all ways, so out there that he disguises his underlying fears, of inadequacy and impotence. His act, both on and off stage, is ingenious, and in an oedipal/electra nod, Sam is of course  drawn to him.

Shiner’s addition to the play brings it to a new level. He is box office potential, but also hip, in with the critics, who seem to despise Thomson, especially a bitter, spinster-like figure who hangs out in a bar across from the theater, awaiting his opening night like a vulture. Meanwhile, the previews, as in that strange, half-price experimental stage of live production, are falling apart. But that’s okay according to Shiner, who schools the outsider Thomson on what is important, what is real. What evolves is a play that dissolves the fourth wall between artist and audience, just as Keaton and director Inarritu flirt with our wall with their Birdman/Batman parallel.  The climax of this path is an accident. In between scenes during the last preview, he heads outside for a smoke break, but locks himself out of the theater. Next, he is wandering through Times Square in his underwear, dodging onlookers and voyeurs in what becomes a serendipitous publicity sensation. This wasn’t what he wanted, however, and afterwards he confronts the hateful critic in the bar, appealing to her sense of fair play, her compassion for the struggling artist. But she’ll have none of it. Convinced he is a charlatan, she pledges to “kill” his play.

At this point everyone–Shiner, Sam, the producer, cast and crew–think he’s delusional, not dealing with reality, though they don’t know the half of it. With opening night upon them, Thomson has one more trick up his sleeve, one more flight of fancy: an on stage suicide that will blow everyone’s mind, even Shiner’s, as well as his brains out. It doesn’t come off (actually, only part of his nose comes off as a result of the on stage gunshot), but the play does, and even the hateful critic can’t resist the uberrealism, ultimately giving Thomson  a rave review. The following day, he is in hospital, recovering from his wounds; meanwhile, the press, the internet public, his producer, are all excited because the play is a triumph. Thomson is not excited, however. Ambiguously disappointed, he removes his bandages, inspects his face in the mirror, and steps out the high rise hospital window. This possibility, of Thomson’s suicide, persists throughout the film and remains until the last shot, wherein we see Sam gazing out the open window, first in frantic abandonment, then in wonder. She believes he can fly.

If you’ve ever felt like a poseur, a madman or woman, a capable person but sometimes a dufus, you should like what Birdman is about. Check it out.

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February 12, 2015 · 8:35 pm

Statement To The Recruits

In a recent statement to the membership of the California Marriage and Family Therapist Association (CAMFT), association lead counsel Cathy Atkins issued guidelines for members regarding the controversial new law AB1775. It’s an interesting report featuring answers to questions posed by members, numerous interpretations of intent, none of them explicated in the Penal code, but leaving therapists and other mandated reporters (not to mention our clients) still wading in ambiguous waters.

* Firstly, it’s good to read a (sort of) acknowledgement that AB1775 is much more than a legal addendum designed to keep us all in touch with advancing technology. It is in effect a re-definition of sexual exploitation, to include the viewing of child porn (CP) alongside a pre-existing definition that was previously  confined to its production and distribution.
*Cathy’s guidelines addresses what I’ve called the conflation of child porn viewing into a definition of sexual exploitation by pointing out that the words “downloading” and “accessing” could be interpreted as meaning the exchanging of files, and so the additional language is designed to reinforce the original Child Abuse and Neglect Reporting Act ( CANRA) laws. She suggests that police will not investigate the mere “downloading” or “streaming” of child porn, and implies that law enforcement will take into account a therapist’s opinion as to whether CP use is “stumbled upon”, whether there are  “factors to be weighed” (such as a spouse’s contrary characterization of CP use), or whether CP use will lead to direct harm of a child. In short, she suggests that therapists will have discretion  in their reporting and that social services/police will take into account our opinions about our clients, but warns that said discretion will not protect us from liability, or even prosecution.
*Hmm? Do we accept this explanation? I’m dubious, obviously. Firstly, I think it likely that police will think that therapists who dispute potential direct harm to children are merely advocating for their clients; that police will not think the viewing of porn is “accidental” simply because we think it is (and wouldn’t such reports be a nuisance?); that police will think the viewing entails (or has entailed) exchanging by virtue of the aforementioned technological advances/nuances related to the internet, and will thus have a pretext for investigation, plus the ensuing legal fall-out, leading to disruption of existing therapeutic episodes, not to mention child abuse prevention efforts,  via the hegemony of the CASOMB system (an issue not referenced by Cathy), as I have described in previous messages to the CAMFT e-tree. So much for therapist discretion, I think.
*Also, I think police are likely to agree with the 2012 US attorney general’s opinion that viewing CP alone does indeed constitute exploitation because the viewer is judged to be aware of the abuse depicted in the CP. And since a therapist becomes aware through client disclosure, then that knowledge of the abuse in turn triggers the obligation to report. The logic here is as follows: we are witness to someone who has witnessed abuse, and because we don’t know the victim we report the witness. Next, Cathy warns that if a therapist is aware that a client has accessed pornography, fails to report that use, and the client later abuses a child, then the therapist may be held criminally responsible for the failed report of possession (or viewing, I guess). BTW: unless a solid correlation exists between use of pornography and direct contact child abuse, then this argument validates the use of prejudice as tantamount to reasonable suspicion–another form of conflation. Otherwise, we should be making Tarasoff reports (pertaining to reports of threats made against others) if our clients report owning copies of American Psycho. More topically, perhaps, are we to infer risk to others if clients are enamored with 50 Shades Of Grey? This law, or the interpretation of it,  thus strikes at the heart of the “imminent risk” principle of exception (of when to break confidentiality), so central to an understanding of the original CANRA laws. Oblivious, AB1775 supporters promote an inference (which belies current research, actually): that viewing of porn will lead to child abuse, or might; and that “might” is sufficient to trigger a process that will leave those tentatively disclosing clients wondering what, if anything, they will ever again share with a therapist.
* So it seems like glibness to assuage members that all will be worked out, and that AB1775 “does not affect the standard of intent of the CANRA statute” . We are not investigators, Cathy reminds us. But we are encouraged to do due diligence to protect children which, as the tautological thinking unfolds, invariably connects the viewing of porn with actual harm to a child. The bill’s author, Melissa Melendez, and others, want police making the distinctions between the accidental users, the regular users, and those relative few who will use CP and also directly harm children. Not the lawyers at CAMFT. Not the researchers. Not any mental health professionals. Not us.
We are the recruited.

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