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Key Needed To Open Up Lock

We met Bernie, a married man who reports a history of mental and emotional abuse from his wife. We’ve not met her, and, therefore, only have Bernie’s information. His wife, I understand only conceptually requested he seek therapy. Due to the immediacy of Bernie’s plight, treatment must focus on mental and emotional survival. Bernie’s early presentation of physical rigidity called for a delay in gathering personal history, customarily a source of inquiry. He was locked in physically from an accumulative effect of rule-out domestic violence. Ordinarily, we find cases of domestic ...

Cavalier Is Not The Same As Incorrect

Please imagine the sustained uproar — especially from those opposing President Trump, and particularly those in the press — if the president had said to black people not voting for him, “You ain’t black.” Now cut the word black, and substitute brown, red, yellow, or white. Please imagine the sustained uproar then. Now substitute any religion or subset of a religion. How about Jewish? Muslim? Buddhist? Hindu? Greek Orthodox? Catholic? Baptist? Presbyterian? Lutheran? How about women? men? Or pick any ethnicity. The justifiable reaction may include these: ¯ Mr. ...

The Essential Worker

On the eve of my junior year in high school, my mother returned to the job she’d held before she became pregnant with me, at age 19, and married my father, who was also 19. At age 36, Janey Schultz was once again a nurse’s aide at the public hospital in our small town of Ashtabula, Ohio. Today, we would call her an essential worker. Back then, she had set off an earthquake in our working-class family. Mom had spent the previous 16 years raising four kids, and it was a mark of pride for my father, a maintenance mechanic at the local power plant, that he could support our ...

After Events Now What?

No decent person can support George Floyd’s mistreatment, or the mistreatment of anyone else, at the hands of police officers with the sworn duty to uphold the law. The Minneapolis authorities moved quickly, and Derek Chauvin was fired from the Minneapolis police department, placed under arrest and charged with second-degree murder and other charges. The three officers who were with him were also fired and charged two counts of aiding and abetting — one for second-degree murder and one for second-degree manslaughter. Peaceful protest in any cause is as American as apple pie, but ...

Will Churchill’s Statue Fall Next?

On Gen. George Washington’s orders, the Declaration of Independence, signed in Philadelphia, was read aloud to his army. On hearing it, the troops marched to Bowling Green, decapitated and pulled down the statue of George III, and sent the remnants to be melted down into musket balls. It was a revolutionary act, a symbolic statement. These once-loyal American subjects were now rebels and no longer owed allegiance to the king. They would fight to end his rule in America. During the recent demonstrations and disorders here, similar acts had about them an aspect of societal rebellion ...

Some Things Do Matter After All

We thought it was a fixed feature of our new era. We thought that objective reality didn’t matter anymore, if it even existed at all. We thought we were so entrapped by our information silos that nothing could penetrate. “LOL. Nothing matters” ran the Twitter meme. What we’ve learned in the past two weeks is that we were wrong. Reality reasserts itself. Minds can change. Just weeks ago, Black Lives Matter was regarded as a fringe movement, a response to a real problem perhaps, but a vastly exaggerated one. Today, the slogan emblazons 16th Street in front of the White House. As ...