Dr. Stanley Goldstein - Author and Psychologist

A TV celebrity recently spoke of the anxiety and depression he felt upon learning his diagnosis of pancreatic cancer. These normally occur when serious illness threatens. And also, for that matter, following a cognitive or physical disability for either can reduce a person's normal functioning ability.

The diagnosis of cancer may well have a unique anxiety-bearing capacity for it possesses similarities to those of the unconscious mind, which are widely feared: its occurrence is unexpected and arising from nowhere; seemingly irrational; and experienced as all-powerful. But this is false since every unconsciously-derived act has a valid reason, even those which appear senseless. In one published case a surgeon felt compelled to repeatedly, publicly expose himself despite the legal and reputation risk until psychotherapy revealed that, by doing so, he was boasting to his mother how powerful he was, as he had wished to do when a toddler.

One member of the clergy, a three-time survivor of cancer, advised the following: that, when afflicted by serious illness, pray, but also get the best medical advice possible.

The recent murder of eighteen-year-old Barnard College student, Tessa Majors, during an armed robbery in a nearby park at nightfall was shocking but unsurprising. Common sense is that one should not walk alone (or even with someone) at that time in that place. My statement is not meant to place blame on the unfortunate victim but rather to assert that Barnard should have educated its students, many of whom are new to New York City, about City ways. Or, in other words, given them "street smarts." Would doing this have saved Tessa's life? Perhaps not since teenagers can be impulsive. But, having done so, Barnard's administrators might now sleep more easily.

Teachers are generally clueless about teaching problematic students and for good reason: it's not their job! Most learning problems derive from inadequate early parenting which affects the development of those basic ego capacities which govern control of behavior, development of a sense of self, mood modulation, and others. Limitations in these are exacerbated by parents who didn't read to and then with their toddlers, who bossed them around rather than explaining "why" which depresses the development of the capacity for abstract thinking, and who didn't foster individual development and demand civil behavior. All else is window dressing, like the computer technology which is expected to alleviate these early life failings but can't. Thus do teachers take the rap for being unable to "re-parent," which is basically not their job and a vastly complicated business too.

I've long been puzzled why some children in therapy who have no problem reading won't spontaneously read or profess to dislike it. Having tentatively concluded that, since reading involves the active use of the self, this creates anxiety for these disturbed children and motivates this resistance. But I've also encountered seriously disturbed children who read many books a week.

Certainly, there may be other contributing factors besides psychopathology: whether early-life parent encouragement of reading existed; the child never having grasped the escapist, soothing possibilities of reading fiction; or their over-involvement in another activity such as video games whose obsessive-compulsive elements reduce anxiety and is one reason for their popularity.

In any case, this would seem a worthwhile topic for study. And now the idea is yours!

The recent suicide of a Los Angeles County attorney, before which he murdered his wife and son and tried to kill his daughter, was shocking but not unusual for there have been several in my area. Thereafter, especially when the perpetrator is prominent, newspapers describe their earlier positive deeds with their depraved final act being downplayed though no distress could justify it.
It would be of benefit that a psychological autopsy of these events be conducted, to educate the public that powerful unconscious factors can cause horrors but also to condemn their immorality in the strongest terms. For while suicide is nearly always irrational, so is the murder of innocents and particularly of children, acts for which no amount of earlier generosity can atone. That the murderers were evil and vile should represent their legacy, not goodness.

Many great books have never been created as an audio edition so what I've been playing with is listening to them using the TTS of Amazon and Google with an old Kindle E-book (version 2) and a modern Android (8.1) smartphone. The speech using this AI is obviously robotic and not terribly enjoyable but I've listened while doing chores. Human-read books are vastly better. Amazon has a Polly AI which is commercial and cheap and I listened to a sample. It is much improved over the others but still not perfect. There's a human emotion fluctuation after a comma and a period which it doesn't get quite right. I found this interesting and wondered if, sooner than later, AI produced audio books will put human readers out of business since it is so much cheaper. Or if it is already being used by publishers. There are already very human-like news readers in China with an increasing ability for news stories to be AI created. All-in-all, it's a fascinating development. But I don't believe that AI will ever push serious writers out of existence. For them and most people, creativity is what counts.

Suicide reflects the seriously inadequate development of those basic ego capacities governing a sturdy sense of self (sense of who one is), modulation of affect, and control over thinking and behavior. This causes profound feelings of worthlessness and, when exacerbated by an immediate stress, suicidal behavior may result.

Thus, a teenager doesn't suicide simply because they broke up with their boy/girl friend, and most recent soldiers who committed suicide never saw combat with many never even having left the USA.

Alcoholism and drug abuse reflect the attempted self-medication of emotional deficiencies. It's not easy to kill oneself, living being a biological imperative, unless one momentarily lacks self-control because of drugs or alcohol use. To paraphrase F. Scott Fitzgerald, 3AM is the darkest time of the day. Nelson Algren attempted suicide after the failure of his first novel in 1935. Fourteen years later he won the National Book Award for The Man With the Golden Arm.

After telling me his nightmare, a patient rejected my interpretation of it as reflecting anger toward his mother. "No, my mother always loved me," he said. Which may have been true for her relinquishing of parental rights enabled the patient's life to dramatically improve after his adoption and psychotherapy.

It is hard to accept being unloved at birth. Though the helpless infant can survive without physical care, psychological neglect can equally damage their future. And the most important person in their earliest years is their mother or mothering figure. Viewing the world with an immature mind, every child considers their parents to be omniscient. Thus if the child is unloved, it must be their fault.

Only with maturity, and possibly psychotherapy, can one accept a basic psychological truth: that while all children are lovable at birth, some mothers ore incapable of providing it. For this realization to occur, two things must happen: an acceptance of their parent's limitations, and their own.

I was a member of the American Society of Clinical Hypnosis for many years and, while a hospital administrator, got pains in my neck at the end of the day. A year later I interpreted this as reflecting some of my employees being a pain in the neck which they were. An ASCH entire journal issue was on cancer and hypnosis and I used one of the article's research protocols (the article related stress to the immune system and the tendency to develop cancer) to make a ten-minute tape which I then used twice and, low and behold, my neck pain disappeared.

Years later, when a nurse at my (stressful) job found that my blood pressure was high, an internist I had known since adolescence recommended that I take it as often as possible, there being no way that I would take medication. I did, used the self-hypnotic relaxation CD repeatedly daily and graphed my readings. My blood pressure readings gradually went down over several months to superb readings (low 120s over low 70s or better) and have remained so. I'm a great believer in the efficacy of hypnosis, considering it not a learned reaction but fostering the entrance into a different physiological state, this "drop" being experienced by many. Napping using self-hypnosis is far more restful too, a 1/2 hour nap, upon awakening, feeling like a several hour ordinary period of sleep.

I've since used the tape (now a CD and on my Android phone) daily and given it to all of my adult patients without charge for relaxation, though hypnosis is useful for far more. I regard hypnosis as mostly best for physical conditions such as alleviating the pain of childbirth, burns, and back ache; to lower high blood pressure along with the use of a digital blood pressure measuring device as a biofeedback mechanism; for sleep difficulty; to reduce the stress of asthmatic children so they're less likely to have an asthma attack, and with similar issues.

On the whole, apart from relieving stress and anxiety, I believe that hypnosis, and mostly the teaching of self-hypnotic technique which is quick, isn't particularly useful when coping with specific trauma. Here, psychological education about its nature and psychodynamic interpretation of the trauma residue would be most beneficial. It is also far safer than the use of medication.

Rudolph Schoenheimer, a loner and brilliant biochemist, was forced to leave Germany in 1933. He discovered that body constituents are in a continuous state of chemical renewal with chemicals appearing and disappearing even in adult organisms while their structure and form remain unchanged. Believed to be a certain winner of the Nobel Prize, he suffered from manic-depression and killed himself at the age of forty-three in 1941.