To Avoid Committing A Far Greater Crime
My enlistment in the Navy was productive and enjoyable. The learning from my involvements of working on ships, their propulsion systems and related machinery, and in visiting other countries, the people and societies, developed the knowledge needed to begin a maritime career.
As my enlistment ended, I knew I needed to improve the intellectual, the learning of the math and science required for thinking. I needed to return to school.
I needed as well, to improve the learning of myself. The learning that affects how I think, learn, and interact with myself, my relationships and society.
I was a happy camper then, returning to school. I had quit in the tenth grade to go into the navy. I wanted to go out and learn of the world. Now, returning began at an adult day school. I completed high school, and the math and science needed for college.
Starting college was the same happiness. The meeting of new people. The challenges of learning. Then, problems began.
The problems of failures in school and my love life. I couldn’t understand what happened. I thought, maybe I could experience, learn and correct. Eventually I got tired of the failures and made some decisions.
My college courses had become a listing of failures and incompletes. The failures of my love life seemed similar. A starting out well, and then failure. The experiences became painful. The happiness was gone.
I dropped out of school. I needed to work, money for paying the bills. Being around Detroit I decided to hire on, vessels of the great lakes commercial fleets, the iron ore boats. Finally, I sought professional help.
I was lost. I couldn’t seem to develop an understanding of my problem. Develop the thinking and learning needed to learn. I decided to see a psychiatrist.
A Person, as a people in caring for themselves, learn responsibility for their intellectual, emotional, and financial needs. They learn to effectively deal with themselves, their relationships and society.
Being successful in these efforts involves learning the failures and successes of self. Including the thinking and learning needed to begin the freedom of becoming one’s own, the freedom of self. The freedom to begin the thinking of what we need to learn.
Returning to work aboard ships, meant I would be gone for months at a time. I worked in the engine department. Different engine room positions and different ships meant different responsibilities. Most positions required three to four months aboard ship before any time off.
My time ashore would also vary. Sometimes this would be several months or maybe longer depending on what I choold choose. This meant sessions of psychoanalysis only when I was home. I was ok with that. I wanted time for thinking.
My life slowly improved. Yet after maybe five years of psychoanalysis, of sessions when home, I began to realize that although my life seemed better, the limits still existed. The same limits as when my problems began, the failures to learn.
A person could say, five years of psychoanalysis seems like an awful long time, and I would agree. But remember please, I was lost when I began the psychoanalysis, and I was still lost. The problems still existed. I still failed. I still couldn’t figure out the problems or what to do.
One thing about this limit I was experiencing, was that it didn’t seem to exist so much in my working aboard ships. Working on and operating a vessels propulsion system and other engineering requirements had always been a source of pleasure, a challenge of enjoyment. I think the reason the limit didn’t have such an effect on my work was because my maritime learning occurred before the problem. There wasn’t an association.
My thinking needed for work was active, involved. This enabled me to develop a perspective. The psychoanalysis was a failure.
I complained to the psychiatrist. “This isn’t working.” He convinced me; my problems would be resolved in the psychoanalysis. A problem for me here, was thinking. The thinking that existed when first going to the psychiatrist. I was lost. The psychiatrist became the source of finding my way. His convincing me to continue was easy.
My limited thinking then, also existed in the psychoanalysis. I remember the psychiatrist complaining of the difficulty of getting me to talk. But the limit of thinking was the problem that brought me to the psychiatrist to begin with. I needed to understand the source, the cause of my limit. I don’t think the psychiatrist ever understood. My problem was thinking. The thinking needed to learn.
After another trip and returning home, and again the psychoanalysis, and near the end of another session that included another failure, another unsuccessful complaint and feelings of dissatisfaction, I blurted out that I had some childhood same sex experiences. I didn’t go into anything specific, just that there were some same sex experiences. The session was ending. He looked at me, nodded his head ok, and said nothing.
As I left his office I thought, why did I even bring that up? The experiences were nothing, childhood playing around.
Thinking of this years later, I realized it was the first time my being aware of experiencing the thinking of my subconscious. The beginning of becoming aware, the subconscious thinks.
The next session, he said nothing of my experience. He did begin saying, “A lot of great men are homosexuals.”
And the next session, I remember looking at him. We are about four feet apart. He is sitting behind his desk, in his desk chair, and turned, facing me. I am off to the left side of his desk, sitting in a comfortable, padded sofa like chair. His right hand is rubbing the inside of his right thigh. His eyes move from looking at his hand rubbing his thigh, and then to me as he is smiling and saying, “When you are able to put your hand here.” his eyes moving from me, to his hand moving on his thigh, and back to me again, “You will be on your way to being cured.”
I looked at him. I said nothing. But I was thinking. Here was this person I had trusted, believed in, had assured me of understanding, becoming well, and here he was trying to put the moves on me. I got up and walked out of his office. I was furious.
In my life, I have had homosexuals approach me. I would tell them that was not my thing. No big deal. With the psychiatrist it was different, and it wasn’t the homosexuality. Rather, and what made me so angry was that he wanted me to become what he wanted, not what I needed.
My perception of this thinking, of being honest in caring for another, began in the summer of 1960. I was part of the crew of a naval ship whose purpose was to repair and maintain Destroyers. We were berthed then, in Kobe, Japan. Since I was part of the engineering department, with work assignments that were often hot and dirty, cleaning up after a day’s work required extra time than other crew members. Consequently, when going ashore, I was usually at the end of the liberty line.
One day as liberty began, I watched as the guys ahead of me started down the ship’s gangway, onto the dock, and headed into town. As I watched, I noticed a Japanese guy standing about six feet away from, and to one side of the bottom of the gangway. He was just standing there. The guys were passing him by. When I got to the bottom of the gangway, he was still standing there.
I stopped and asked him, “Can I help you?” He said, “I am looking for someone to help me with my English pronunciation.” I said, “Let’s go get a beer.”
I learned he lived with his grandparents. His parents were killed in the bombing of Kobe. He held no hostility. He realized it was war. He was still going to school, working on his degree. We met several times. We had some good conversations.
I learned one of the things the Japanese lost during the war was their sense of pride.
That fall we returned to the States. I got Christmas leave and went home. My Dad, an executive for an automobile company, held a Christmas party. I had a good relationship with my parents. My Dad and I were a lot alike. I helped out.
In my conversation with some of the executives, we got around to the automobiles the Japanese were producing. I said they needed to exercise some caution with the Japanese. Their sense of pride was involved in their automobiles. I was laughed at. My Dad said later, “See what I have to put up with.” It was the difference between group and individual thinking.
I learned too, the word pride has two meanings: justifiable self-respect and conceit. A difference learned when thinking.
When I left the psychiatrist, my thinking was still the same as when I began. I still had a limit, a weakness.
I began thinking about my problem. The thinking began a writing out of my thoughts, an effort to develop their understanding. As I worked on, wrote down the thoughts forming in my thinking, I began to realize they were becoming something bigger, a philosophical thought process. An idea began. This could be it. This could develop the answer I need to know.
In writing, I had started again the same process that made me successful at sea. My thinking and learning depended first upon me.
After several months of writing and rewriting as the thoughts and ideas developed, the thought process seemed to end. The ideas seemed complete. I hired a friend to type up the work for me.
This was 1975. There were no personal computers yet. No nice little printers. My writing was done by hand, with a pen and paper. The typing came to twenty-seven pages. I was satisfied. There were some good thoughts, but I was tired. The writing, the effort, seemed to have exhausted my thinking and me.
Further, in spending time writing I had neglected a relationship, my love life. This was good, but for the limit. We had been dating for several years. We were involved. Maryrose was great. She was intelligent, beautiful, fun to be around, and could cook. The problem was me. Our relationship would develop to almost, thoughts of becoming married, and then the limit.
Going to the psychiatrist was trying to understand that limit. The limit in my thinking when my problem began. I knew the problem was me. Not her. If I brought her up during a session, it would have been rare. The same as when I started writing, I kept her out of it. My involving her in the work would have affected my thinking. The development of the ideas I was working on, a philosophical development to help in looking at me, understanding what I am.
One way I knew the limit still existed was in not being true. I mean it’s one thing to have women friends, I like women, they are cool and phenomenal, and another to want physical relations. I had already begun to learn there is a difference in the development of a person when there is a separation between love and sex and when love and sexuality is one thought, one partner. My problem was limiting this learning to become.
One woman I was friends with, and during the time I was tired from writing, brought me a poem. She wrote: You are like a cat, and seem to come alive, at night. You hate, because I cannot love, the way you do, or want me to.
Instead of realizing she was only looking for, and needed attention, remember I had an unresolved limit, weakness in thinking, and I was probably a little grouchy from being tired, I placed her poem into my writing. On the next page I wrote: Hate? You want to see hate? I began writing thoughts and ideas of hate.
As the thoughts of hate developed, they became enjoyable. I was correct. Whatever were my thoughts and actions, I was correct. I wrote them down. My writing was part of the developmental process.
In the original thoughts, among the ideas I wrote was a responsibility of self. A Responsibility that affects how I think, learn, and interact with myself, my relationships and society. A responsibility that begins an understanding of how we think.
That in our thinking, our mind basically functions as an interaction of thinking, learning, and remembering, between the conscious and subconscious. All of our thoughts and actions enter our consciousness, and simultaneously pass to the subconscious, where the information begins being processed.
This process, an interaction of thinking between the conscious and subconscious, develops the information into learning and memories. With most people, this thinking, learning, and remembering, also develops the sense of self, of a person becoming more. The learning of what they are and choose to become.
An important part of this thinking and learning is becoming aware of our subconscious. The subconscious stores as memories, all of our thoughts and actions, our experiences and learning, our successes and failures.
These thoughts can surface in response to conscious thinking. They can surface on their own. Surface as thoughts that can seem inappropriate but have a purpose. Their understanding can affect learning, and often what a person needs to learn; the development of the mind, the learning to think.
A part of learning then, is realizing the subconscious thinks. It strives to be its own. For example, it is the source of creative thinking.
Creativity is a subconscious drive, initiated by a conscious idea that begins an interaction of thinking between the conscious and subconscious in creating the thought or idea. We can then, create ideas through the learning process of creative thinking. We also can create our own problems.
The initial writing, the original thoughts were creative. The newness of the experience, the concentrated effort of the subconscious drive, began a being totally involved that left me exhausted by the time the work completed. The work seemed finished because the subconscious development of the ideas were complete.
As I began the development of hate, of my thoughts and actions being correct, the enjoyment of the thinking and development continued, went on without anything else being unusual for several weeks. Don’t we all like our thinking to be correct? I wrote my thoughts and the hate developed.
The definition of sanity is being able to effectively deal with reality. Which also then, creates thoughts about insanity.
I threw my television, part of my stereo, the combination amplifier and tuner, and my engineers license and mariner identification card into a trash receptacle. My actions were correct, enjoyable.
There is greatly disliking something that can be close to hate, but not quite the same. My problem was preventing me from becoming my own, being myself. I could easily say I hated the limit I was experiencing, but it was really a great dislike. I’ve always liked myself. So there was no hate.
As I began the creativity of original thoughts, an effort to understand the why of my limited thinking, there existed this great dislike of what I was. Liking myself then, and disliking what I had become, were two separate thoughts. I liked myself. What I had already learned and knew. I didn’t like what I had become, lost.
As I started the thought process of hate, the same thinking, writing, and creativity, the effort of the understanding of why of the original thoughts, still existed. They became part of the effective and creative, thinking and writing of the development of hate.
I stripped myself of things I liked, enjoyed being involved with, my television, stereo, engineers license and mariners document, throwing them into a trash receptacle, in an effort to get closer to the learning and understanding about hate and me. I enjoyed being correct in my thinking.
The television and stereo was like throwing a thousand dollars into a trash can, which was one matter. They were mine. I could do with them as I choose. But my engineers license and mariner identification card was another, a different matter entirely. They are issued by The Coast Guard and considered government property. They weren’t mine to throw away.
As I continued writing, continued to develop the hate, I asked my lady friend of the poem out to dinner. She said she had a previous dinner engagement with some Jewish friends. But I knew, I was the one that was important. I was correct. An anti-Semitism began to develop.
When I left the service, I began a weekend job at Irv’s service station. He had been in the Navy in WW2. As I told him I just got out of the Navy, he said you’re hired. He was a great guy. Great stories.
At the adult day school I attended, the principal was also a WW2 vet. He fought in Europe, the Army. He lived with his family about a mile from me. Occasionally he would ask for a ride to school in the morning. We would talk. He was another great guy, and more great stories. He and Irv attended the same Synagogue.
At school I met Roseann Mandel. She became a romantic involvement. She was great.
So, in my relationships with Jewish people, there was brotherly love and romantic love. For any emotion like love to exist, there has to be a reason, a source to cause the feelings. The same with hate. I hated the psychiatrist. I wanted to kill him.
When I was about seventeen and a half, the navy gave a written exam looking for enlisted to attend Annapolis. Out of the seventh fleet there were five that passed. I was one of the five. Two failed the physical, which left three of us. At an officer review board, a situation of six naval officers on one side of a table and me on the other, we came to a mutual conclusion that at present I was too obstinate, independent, and rebellious to ever make it through Annapolis. It was a good, friendly conversation, and a good learning experience of interacting within a system and organization I respected. The other two went to Annapolis.
I knew I needed to learn. At the time I wasn’t concerned. There was already enough going on. My learning about ships, and the people of different countries we visited.
Several months later, an engine room work assignment was to rebuild an in-port boiler feed pump. The job took about twenty-four hours. The next morning, the cook knew I had worked all night, and knew I liked my eggs over medium. I liked to lightly cover the yoke with pepper, dip into this with some toast, and soak up the yoke and pepper for eating. An enjoyment.
As the cook put the eggs on my tray and I proceeded down the chow line, a mess cook took some hash browns and threw them on my eggs, breaking the yokes. A friend that was next to me in the chow line told me later that he had never seen anything like that. All of a sudden there wasn’t an emotion on my face and I was over the chow line and after the guy.
When they pulled me off of him, I had knocked him down, had him by the back of his head, and was pounding his face into a steel deck.
I was told to go to the engine room. Him, they took to sick bay. When he was well enough, he was transferred. With me, nothing was said.
The navy then, didn’t tolerate people that created dissension. People aboard ship, lived and worked too close together. Nobody liked the guy.
When I was a child, my Dad used to say don’t lose your temper, don’t get into fights. Yet several times I remember when someone made him angry they were knocked to the ground. It was all something to think about.
The chow line experience scared me. I wasn’t aware I had such capabilities. I could have easily killed him.
My actions initially were difficult to understand. They were a natural part of me, a process of self-defense. The conditions were right. It surfaced.
My thinking at the time became, I need to control my thoughts and actions and control the reaction. A better perspective would have been, I need to learn more of myself, to productively use my thoughts and emotions. Control began a repression. Experiences affect.
Problems and failures are part of our development. We choose in using them to think, learn, understand, and become more.
Society and people can create an individual’s failures and problems. Each individual can also create their own failures and problems. I created mine.
I dated my first love in high school, the navy, and my first year of college. Then we broke up.
As my academic failures began, I knew there was a problem. But I couldn’t understand the cause.
I could say. I should have realized. I needed to go through a healing process of learning and accepting to effectively deal with my thoughts and emotions. But the experience here is of the need to learn.
I didn’t know; we need to address painful thoughts and emotions. Thoughts were occurring, of trying to understand the why of my thoughts and feelings. They seemed to solve nothing. I started shoving them aside. This began a trying to forget her.
Usually, everything that enters our consciousness also passes to the subconscious where the information begins being processed. An interaction of thinking between the conscious and subconscious, developing the information into learning and memories, the sense of self, and becoming more.
My subconscious though, responding to my effort of forgetting began a different process. A shutting down of the interaction between the conscious and subconscious, a limiting of my thinking, learning, and remembering, my sense of self. This limiting of my ability to think and remember what I have thought and become, also limited development of what I could become. The subconscious action made understanding what happened, difficult.
I had created a limit in my ability to think.
The creative thought process for the original thoughts and the hate, had a similarity in that both began with a conscious thought and were creative in their development. The original thoughts though were constructive. Their development created freedom. Whereas the hate was destructive. The thinking of being correct, like the development of anti-Semitism, created failure, bondage.
The anti-Semitism caused a conflict between the love for my friends and the developing hate. I was becoming something that wasn’t me. The same with wanting to kill the psychiatrist. I knew somehow, I was more involved with this whole creative thought process than I thought.
Eventually, as time passed and I learned. I realized that my subconscious, trying to understand the problems, the failures in psychoanalysis, set him up to learn. Bringing up anything that could be about homosexuality, like a same sex childhood experience, got him going, and got me going out the door.
We all like to think we are loving and kind. But all of us also have the ability to hate, a natural human emotion.
When we have depended on another. Then find we have been lied too. We can hate with an affect.
The conflicts caused by the hate, the thinking of being correct, of thoughts and thinking I didn’t like, of becoming something that wasn’t me, was creating an angry stress, a supporting of, and against what I was becoming. I started to realize I needed to stop what I had begun, before anything worse began.
I also started to realize, stopping the creativity, the development of hate had become a problem. Because of my limit, my weakness, I couldn’t create the thinking, the thought needed to stop. I needed help. The solution came from my subconscious.
I rolled the writing into a bundle, went to my friend of the poem’s house, broke a hole in the windshield of her car with a hammer, and into which I left the writing.
My writing began as a need to express myself, to write down for thinking and memory my thoughts and ideas. As the hate developed, the writing then became, like my nicely typed twenty-seven-page manuscript, a work of being covered with handwritten thoughts and ideas of hate. The same with over a dozen more pages that began blank, and now too were covered with similar handwritten thoughts of hate. Finally, there was her poem.
Her poem, which was handwritten by her on a single page, was still as she gave it to me. I wrote nothing on the page, or changed her thought in anyway.
After leaving the writing, and while driving home, a calmness began in my thinking. Without the writing, the development of hate, the stress from the conflicts had stopped. My thinking though was damaged. The hate that developed, and that I created, still existed in, and limited all of my thinking.
The following day I received a phone call from a Sargent of the local police department. I was told not to contact my friend of the poem, and that he would be coming by to take me in for booking.
At the stated time, I was waiting. He knocked. I opened the door. He looked at me and said, “Weren’t you on the Highland Park swimming team? I remember you from when my brother was also on the team.” I said, “Yes.”
As we walked to his police car he said to sit up front in the passenger seat, that it would look better for the neighbors. He talked as we drove to the station. Then he asked a question. “Why did you do it?” I said, “Hate.” He said, “No. No. Was it jealousy or what?” I wasn’t believed. Hate was the only answer I could think of. The damage to my thinking was effective. I looked out the window and said nothing more.
I was in trouble. I couldn’t defend myself. I already had the limit, weakness in my thinking. Now, I’ve compounded it with damage from the hate.
Committing the crime was a looking for help. Breaking the windshield and leaving the writing stopped the creativity, and the development of hate. The crime too, meant that the police would keep the writing as evidence. I couldn’t get the writing back.
The writing connected myself, the creativity, and the development of hate. Leaving the writing separated myself from, and ended what I began. For me, my actions were an amazing subconscious effort. At the time, my thinking was way too damaged for any understanding and explanation other than one word, hate.
Using the windshield of my friend’s car meant there would also be a separation between us. Because of her poem, she became part of my minds perception of the source, the development of hate. Until I could straighten myself out, correct the damage I created in my thinking, I wanted her away from me.
The day of the trial, the beginning of June 1975, at the 48th district court of Birmingham, Michigan, as I walked into the building and towards the courtroom door, I saw standing near the doorway, the attorney I hired – I had been charged with a felony. That didn’t make me happy. – the arresting officer, and my lady friend of the poem. I walked past them, saying nothing, and into the courtroom and took a seat.
The attorney came over and said, “Why didn’t you stop?” I don’t think he realized how screwed up my thinking was. I couldn’t explain as yet, what I didn’t know. I just looked at him. He said, “I am going to have to redo all I did.”
In writing the original thoughts, I had started again a process of becoming my own, me. For example, my subconscious learned the interaction of thinking from my development.
Granted, I really screwed up, getting involved in the hate. Yet there was learning, of becoming more. And now, getting involved in anything they had decided for me, whatever it was, wasn’t my decision of continuing to become me. I had committed a crime, breaking the windshield of a car, to avoid committing a far greater crime, killing the psychiatrist, murder. That was me.
That in my experience of developing hate, and regardless of the problems encountered, because choosing to get into hate will cause problems, I had controlled my thoughts and actions. Writing my thoughts and ideas enabled me to become aware, however limited, the thinking of my subconscious. What I was becoming.
Further, and what I thought, what really amazed me, of how something you know is wrong, know is ignorant and bad, can become something good. The development of the anti-Semitism made me realize I had become something that wasn’t me. And this, enabled me to realize I wanted to kill the psychiatrist, to realize the source of my hate. I began an effort, a thought process to end the hate.
Committing a crime enabled me to avoid committing a far greater crime.
I was convicted of a misdemeanor, given two years non-reporting probation, stay away from my friend of the poem, restitution for damages, and return for treatment with the psychiatrist.
I started another work of thinking and writing to straighten out my thinking. After several months, I made an appointment with the psychiatrist. The realization that I was more involved with what happened between us than I thought, enabled me to control the negative thoughts and feelings I had for him. This allowed me to make two visits to his office, without him ever realizing how I felt.
I wasn’t the same person. I wasn’t lost anymore. I had purpose. He didn’t know what to do. He was now the one that was lost. I saw him twice to satisfy the court ruling. I had returned.
The experience of being charged with a felony because of an effort of looking for help didn’t make me happy. My difficulty in not being able to understand and communicate, caused problems. After I started the work to straighten out my thinking, I left a copy of the writing on the windshield of my friend of the poem’s car, without any damage. I placed the copy under the windshield wiper, to hold it in place. I was celebrating, happy in my effort of starting a process to correct.
I was told by my attorney to return to court. And told there by the Judge that if I couldn’t control myself I would be put somewhere where I would be. My actions, breaking the windshield were for a reason. The same as not causing any damage.
Consider too, from the moment the arresting officer asked me why did you do it, I wanted to bring up what happened between the psychiatrist and me. That the psychiatrist tried to put the moves on me. That the psychiatrist wanted me to become what he wanted, not what I needed. To learn what I needed to know, the cause of my problem. But my thinking was too screwed up to even begin any explanation. Further, the psychiatrist could have simply said. Well, he is a patient. And he obviously has problems.
My Engineers license and mariner identification card was another problem. They had been issued at the Toledo Coast Guard Office of Marine Inspection. I had friendships there. Telling them that I threw my license and document into a trash can and everything else that happened upset some people. I was sent to see a psychiatrist at the US Public Health Hospital in Detroit.
After the appointment, he gave me a letter sealed in an envelope to give to the Coast Guard. My license and document were reissued. I was told, don’t do that again.
In carrying the letter, I really wanted to look inside but I didn’t dare. I respected the Coast Guard. If the envelope looked at all like it had been tampered with, I had a feeling it wouldn’t have been good.
The effort of thinking and writing, of straightening out my thinking continued until the conflict of the anti-Semitism, the love and hate ended. I used the conflict as a gage of my thinking.
Writing down my thoughts enabled me to look at and think about, become conscious of my minds subconscious thinking and development. The effort certainly was an experience. I always felt though, had faith, that everything would be all right. The outcome would be successful.
I now had two works that were unfinished, the original thoughts or creative thinking, and the development and correction of hate. Of thoughts, ideas, and problems that were unresolved, and now become dormant. I couldn’t get the thoughts, the creativity to begin. I tried. I would look at the writing, think about it, make efforts to write. But not one thought, one word.
I returned to working aboard ship, first on the lakes and then deep sea. I worked on commercial and naval vessels. The work was enjoyable. I even began enjoying time ashore. I developed old and new relationships, and by the winter of 1980, taught courses at the maritime school in Toledo, mostly for Engineering Officers that worked the great lakes. But some worked deep sea and some the rivers. There were always a lot of good stories. Life was good. I partied with friends at the Coast Guard.
1982, I’m living in Florida. I have experienced by now, several good relationships with the opposite sex. Most seemed to end with new relationships. Of what seemed, a developing and becoming more.
My development though was unchanged. All the writing I did from 1975 to 1977, the original thoughts, the development of hate, and correcting the damage, was dormant. Further, there was no writing, and thus no learning from 1977 to 1982.
There was the learning that the subconscious thinks, the interaction between the conscious and subconscious, and that the choice, the deciding to hate, brings an enjoyment, a thinking of being correct. But nothing seemed to be of consequence that I could apply to my life.
I was surprised then, as another relationship ended and a problem began.
As I entered a swimming pool for a workout, I felt as if I was watching myself in a movie. My perception of reality wasn’t right. I decided to make an appointment with a psychiatrist.
He was good. My only complaint, which I voiced during our second appointment, was that he offered me medication five or six times during our first visit. Each time I said no.
In the early seventies, during my involvement with Maryrose, and when I was home from shipboard work, I would drive her to work in the morning and pick her up when she was ready to leave and come home. She worked as a therapist at a psychiatric clinic.
One day, as I often arrived early so she didn’t have to wait, I decided to visit the clinic’s, patient waiting room. Perhaps, see what they had for reading. Entering, there was a patient waiting for his appointment. I said hello. We talked.
I knew that in the past several years, those working in the clinic had really become involved in prescribing psychiatric medication. They spoke of it as a miracle cure. It was going to empty the psychiatric hospitals.
Politely, I asked him if he was taking any medication. He said yes. Then he thought for a moment and said, if I tell you something, you won’t tell anyone, will you? I said, of course not. He said, I don’t take it all the time. I said, why not? He said, I can’t think. I said, that’s a good reason.
As I thought later of the conversation, the conclusion was simple. How can a person with intellectual and emotional problems become well, if they can’t think? I started questioning psychiatric medication.
The second psychiatrist also wanted to run some tests, to check for a chemical imbalance in my brain. I declined.
This didn’t make him happy. He said, “If nothing changes by the next visit, we will run some tests.”
Several weeks after being convicted of the crime by the Birmingham court, I requested that my writing be returned. The drive that created the hate, ended as I left the writing in the windshield. So this was no longer a problem. The police kept one page for their file and returned the rest.
It was a mess. My nicely typed twenty-seven-page article, had thoughts of hate written all over it. In my effort of trying to get the creative thoughts to begin again, and clean up the work, I rewrote two parts, the interaction of thinking between the conscious and subconscious, and the two sets of threes.
The thoughts wouldn’t begin. I stowed it all away in a cardboard box.
After the first visit with the second psychiatrist, I removed from stowage the rewrites on the interaction and the two sets of threes. I brought them with me for the second visit. He enjoyed the work.
He also brought up during the second visit a perception of what I was doing. “Stop trying to forget her.” I don’t have that kind of a mind. I would eventually begin to realize I was shutting down my own thinking, shutting down the interaction between the conscious and subconscious.
We decided to end treatment after the second visit, with an open door to return as I chose. I learned more in two visits with this guy, than five years with the other.
The second psychiatrist was an honest and caring man. I liked him. His insight during the second visit was definitely helpful. But I feel, had I taken the medication he offered me five or six times during our first visit, you would not be reading this. I don’t know what kind of people visited him. He seemed surprised I said no.
The medication I felt would have limited further my already limited thinking and interaction with myself. The learning of the second visit then, would not have occurred. My effort was to learn.
An effect of intellectual and emotional problems is that when they are not resolved, they will repeat. I was about to learn this.
My change of consciousness, perception of reality as I entered the swimming pool was the beginning of my subconscious shutting down my interaction of thinking. I was recreating my problem.
In trying not to forget her, I drove out to where the woman and I became lovers. Standing there and thinking of her, an anger against my limited thinking, against what I was, began. My sense of self shattered like a glass being smashed on a rock, a violent and total destruction.
A rage began that lasted for several days. Then it stopped. My mind became calm. The same reaction as when I broke the windshield, left the writing, and was driving home. The same as then, there was now. All my thinking and learning was screwed up. I needed to begin another effort of picking up all the pieces, some sharp like broken glass that could hurt in the learning and acceptance of self, of putting myself back together.
In this second experience then, were similarities with the first. Like the hatred I felt towards the first psychiatrist, the rage from my sense of self being shattered, repeated the hate.
Unresolved problems repeat. I was responsible. I had created it. Not effectively dealing with my thoughts and emotions set up my experiences.
Correcting the damage, again took almost two years, the same as before. Before too, after I used up my savings, my Dad was still around. He gave me several loans that I repaid after my first trip back to sea. This time I had a friend that owned a small trucking company. After my savings were gone, I drove a semi. It paid the bills and enabled me to care for myself as I worked on, correcting my thinking.
Thinking and writing created learning and development. A repairing of the damage to my thinking, the quality of my thoughts, and a restarting of the interaction between my conscious and subconscious, the ability to think. This correcting my thinking was initially difficult because of the existing limits. As the work of learning and correcting developed, improvements became.
The thinking, the thought process that created my various experiences: my problem, the original thoughts, the development and correction of hate, and the beginning of the second experience, was subconscious.
Learning then of subconscious thinking, the learning the cause of each subconscious experience, each failure to think and learn., meant learning of self. A thinking, learning, writing, and remembering that developed the interaction of thinking between the conscious and subconscious, my perception, consciousness of self, and a gradual improvement of thinking.
My problem created a weakness in my thinking. Thinking and writing created learning.
On the page of my writing the police kept for their file is an anti-Semitic slur. Proof, that in being questioned by the arresting officer, concerning the reason for my actions, telling him hate was correct. Hate, that was an emotional development from an association with a psychiatrist.
© Ernest G Jackson 2022 All Rights Reserved. | 6930 Words.