October 06, 2002

Shrinks For Saddam

     As bona fides for his Baghdad caper, Rep. Jim Mc'Dermott cited his Vietnam vet status. As it turns out, I like Mc'Dermott was battle hardened-stateside, and fought off the Viet Cong from the redoubts of St. Alban's Naval Hospital in Queens, New York. I too was a Navy shrink, from '67-'69. It was a piece of luck that placed me there as a Lieut. Commander after my psychiatric residency. Not as lucky as Mc'Dermott who was assigned to a California Naval Hospital, where the surf and sun could provide regular relief from the rigors of war. What were the duties of a Navy psychiatrist? I drove to work from my upper East side apt. arriving at 9AM, conducted rounds on the psychiatric ward, which consisted of the patients all standing at attention next to their neatly made beds while I walked past each one inspecting the neatness of their uniforms. If any had complaints they could speak to me for a few minutes after rounds. The staff then met for coffee and the nurses described any problems overnight. We then adjusted psychotropic medications and began to interview new arrivals. This took approximately 2 hours per morning. Most of the patients were marines who had gotten into trouble with their c.o.'s in 'Nam and who were shipped stateside as 'head cases'. They had no interest in psychotherapy and were quite happy to be back in the states. Some chronic trouble makers were shipped to the brig in Brooklyn, but most were quickly discharged to civilian life. Another duty we had, which Dr. Mc'Dermott must have had too, was to interview civilians who were claiming psychiatric problems in order to get out of the draft. These were, most often, Ivy League students who were eager to protest the war and cite the unfair burden falling on the lower classes, but who, when it came to their own skin, were all too eager to let the uneducated poor die in their place. Often they would feign psychosis, or homosexuality to get their exemption. This is where I learned first hand the hypocrisy of the left, a lesson that has stayed with me over the years.
By 4PM I was done with my day's work and headed back to Manhattan. I was able to begin my private practice in the hours after my Navy stint. It was an amazingly easy time, complete with dinners at the elegant Officer's Club-the Navy was known in those days for the excellence of its cuisine, shopping at the PX, where I could load up on cut rate necessities for my growing family. It was with very mixed feelings that I concluded my 2 years in the Navy. I now joke with friends who didn't serve about how I was defending the country during those years. Thus to read Mc'Dermott linking himself with those who actually fought in the jungles of Vietnam while he was California Dreamin' was a bit much.
One thing I doubt Mc'Dermott is dissembling about: he is a shrink, one of the modern type, for whom bad behavior is the result of misunderstanding. Thus Saddam, while acknowledged to be a behavior problem, is to be understood as craving kind treatment and understanding. We are to blame for not according him sufficient respect, not acknowledging how he feels. The usual mindless cant of the therapeutic culture, much of it imbibed in the '60's when psychiatry was infected by counterculture gurus like R.D. Laing and Tim Leary asserting that we would all be happy if only our parents had been kinder and not driven us crazy. I suspect he heard the same tales of woe as I did from the psychopaths he interviewed in the Navy and listened with sympathy, like Officer Krupke, to their laments, before he turned on the Beach Boys and headed off to catch some rays.

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