Dr. Stanley Goldstein - Author and Psychologist

Ignorance about mental health conditions is widespread, fostered by such reductionist psychiatric nonsense as "chemical imbalance" and the FDA's love of psychotropics and electrical gadgets. Depression is merely the "depressing" of feelings which can occur for one or more of several reasons: feeling that one's difficulties are great and giving up; the loss of ability through illness or injury or a beloved's death; or uncertainty about a decision and being "stuck." PTSD symptoms reflect the mind's healthy attempt to recover its equilibrium after an excessive stressful event(s).

The publicized benefits of drugs, which are often based on inadequate or faulty research, tend to be vastly exaggerated with their side-effects being downplayed. The ignorance of child psychological development and developmental psychopathology, widespread among doctors and the general public, motivates this search for miracle psychotropic solutions, and people getting "high" on dangerous substances instead of life.

Alcohol is an acquired taste best left unacquired. Having said this, the tendency to develop substance abuse problems derives from early childhood experiences during which basic ego capacities governing thinking, behavior, and others develop. Usually arising during adolescence, it isn't easy to treat since the pleasurable/quickly acting drug substance must be given up before psychotherapy can affect the needed change of damaged personality which aroused its use.

But personality tendency matters too, an instinctive need for self-control, and also learning from others that unfortunate and sometimes deadly things can happen when using such substances. Nuff said.

One reason might be the ease of self-publishing with many considering their life story and imagined fantasy of value to a wider public, and another being the generally poor state of public education in which literacy is no longer considered the minimal requirement for high school graduation.

The encouragement of reading by parents may also be less prevalent with some parents failing to read first to and then with their toddlers, this being a time when the child can naturally learn reading since the mind has an inherent capacity to induct the nature of reading just as it does the grammatical structure of the language of the nation into which they are born.

A smaller factor, I believe, is that reading involves a loss of self-control while immersed in the written words which is unconsciously scary for anxious youth. I having known good readers who never read, preferring video game play which is heavily obsessive-compulsive, one of the mind's natural ways to reduce anxiety and thus powerfully motivating. 

1. Schizophrenia is greatly misdiagnosed particularly when substance abuse is present. 2. The benefits of psychotropic drugs tend to be exaggerated and their side-effects downplayed. A 1970s extensive study found the lowest rate of recidivism for severely disturbed hospitalized patients being when no medication was given, the next best result when medication was prescribed only during hospitalization, and the poorest outcome being when patients were told they need take medication after discharge (by believers of the "chemical imbalance" myth). 3. Explaining psychodynamics to patients can have a powerful healing effect as that paranoia is simply being overly watchful. Simple organization incompetence is often misinterpreted as conspiracy. As an aside, long ago the Silicon Valley guru, Andrew Grove, then head of Intel, wrote a famed book, Only The Paranoid Survive. 4. Information from mental health professionals varies in validity depending on their training, talent, and experience with some being worthless or even harmful. Still, people don't go to clinicians for advice, they almost always knowing what they want but being unable to achieve it and with which they need help. 5. Suicide reflects complex motive deriving from long term unhappiness exacerbated by recent stress, it often involving drug or alcohol use since there is a powerful biological imperative to live.

While reading the past bestseller, "Gone Girl," I incidentally viewed the Netflix documentary, "American Nightmare." Then learning of the events which almost destroyed an innocent couple as police and reporters depicted a horrific crime as hoax.
Which would be odd enough but for the identity of the real criminal: a handsome former Marine and Harvard educated lawyer, Matthew Muller, who is now serving a lengthy prison sentence for his crimes.
Largely ignored in this puzzling series of events is that Muller's crimes of kidnap and rape allegedly began with peeping at women through windows which is clinically termed "voyeurism." Despite Muller's attorney describing him as suffering from untreated anxiety, depression, and Bipolar Disorder, there was apparently no psychological investigation to determine what childhood experiences might have motivated his adult crime spree.
A psychoanalyst once wrote of treating a physician who felt compelled to expose himself publicly despite the risk of prosecution. During treatment it was discovered that, by doing so, this doctor was showing his mother how potent he was through a compulsion that began during childhood.
Could Muller's first crime of voyeurism have derived from an unconscious need to resolve an early life trauma, something witnessed but not understood involving a naked female or the sexual act? Yet because looking can never bring about the reassurance sought, it tends to be insatiable and increase in intensity, becoming associated with shyness ("look don't touch") or adopting a sadistic element. Adding to Muller's puzzling behavior was his attempt to reduce the psychological damage to his victim by denouncing the widely publicized allegation that she had committed a hoax and, in what must be unique in the annals of crime, driving her home after the kidnap and rape.
The unconscious is very powerful and one must respect its power.

The process of gaining a book contract is different for every author and luck plays a role. I had just left a long-term hospital job and was at loose ends. My first thought was to write a research paper, then to write a book though the only thing I had written to that point was an essay on love which was published in my college's newspaper and a two-hundred-fifty page doctoral dissertation. But being completely ignorant of the publishing industry I trudged on, writing a one-page outline of my proposed book and its first three pages. Which I sent to the marketing director of Simon and Schuster or Doubleday, I no longer remember which, gaining their name from the phone directory (remember those?).

A month later I received an apologetic reply from him, stating that he had been traveling across the country and so been delayed in responding. He said they weren't interested in publishing my proposed book since they wouldn't know how to market it but if I wanted to write more stories like the one I enclosed they would be interested.

Feeling insulted by his delay in responding (like I said, I knew nothing about publishing) I ignored his letter. Two weeks later I was walking with a girl-friend in a Manhattan park where we met a couple she knew. The man had a degree in English from Columbia College and wrote travel articles and small pamphlets like those found in supermarkets ("Do You Know Your Wife?" etc). The only thing I knew about publishing is that one needed a lawyer to negotiate a contract, which I optimistically assumed I would get. I asked him if he knew one, he gave me her name and she who turned out to be a major figure in the publishing industry, partner in a large law firm, the past lawyer of a historic Hollywood screenwriter/novelist, and (I later read) is mentioned in the last volume of William Shirer's autobiography.

I phoned her, she asked to see the three pages I wrote, I sent it to her, she became my agent, and within two weeks I had an agent, a publisher, an editor, and a contract that required me to complete the book in a year. Terrified of failure, I completed the book in six months, it was published a year later ("Troubled Children/Troubled Parents: The Way Out") and my agent sent me the rave reviews including one from Publishers Weekly ("outstanding").

A sad article in The Wall Street Journal ("A Bat Infestation, Postponed Surgeries and Unpaid Bills: A Hospital Chain in Crisis - March 20, 2024) sounds like the script for a horror movie for which my following scene is suggested. Doctor tells patient: "That bite on your neck is NOT from a vampire bat but from one of our common hospital bats. The FDA-approved Garlic Wreath pinned to your gown provides 94% protection against mortal or immortal wounding so do not fret. You and your husband will become accustomed to its odor and may even find it erotic. This is why its commercial name is 'Ordasm.'"

An article in The Wall Street Journal ("The Case Against an Annual Physical"/Feb. 19, 2024) aroused several thoughts.

The basic problem is that many illness are caused by lifestyle issues that doctors are loathe to address and patients are loathe to hear and usually ignore. A nurse told me that 90% of the patients in her hospital were over 300lbs. and ignored medical advice about diet. Another basic problem is that doctors are paid by procedure and not giving advice so which do you expect gains priority?

Having fortunately been healthy, I once told a physician that I didn't think I could get a chronic illness and she responded, "That's a good delusion. Keep it," which is true. But invasive unneeded tests can be dangerous. Read, "Should I Be Tested For Cancer? Maybe Not And Here's Why" by H. Gilbert Welch, M.D., M.P.H. A noted book that I bought five copies for relatives.

The skill of a doctor is critical too. I've Twittered that Americans are in far greater danger of being killed by their family doctor than a terrorist. One more thing: drug companies tend to exaggerate the purported benefits and downplay the potential side-effects of their wares. Nuff said.

In the era before cellphones, driving in a St. Louis suburb, my car got stuck on a road's divider while making a left turn. It was in early morning with no help or cars to be seen. A car finally appeared and stopped opposite mine. It held four huge guys and I regretted leaving my pistol at home. The driver came over and asked what happened. "My car's stuck," I said fearfully. After briefly speaking to his companions they came to my car, picked it up, and moved it back onto the road. I wanted to pay the driver but he refused. "There's a revival meeting at St. Louis Field tomorrow night. Come," he said. Then, without another word, my four angels drove off, vanishing into the night.

An article in The Wall Street Journal ("Why Are We So Obsessed with Sam Bankman-Fried's Parents?"/November 10, 2023) aroused several thoughts since, like many articles concerning him, it ignored the emotional problems involved. Apparently Sam had serious psychological issues during childhood which were treated with drugs rather than psychotherapy following his (widely reported) diagnosis with the long popular but unsophisticated notion of Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD). The early twentieth-century precursor of this diagnosis in America was "Minimal Brain Dysfunction" (MBD) of which a Harvard psychiatrist then remarked that only a doctor with a minimal brain dysfunction would use it. The symptoms of ADHD are identical to anxiety and depression which are present in virtually all medical and psychological disturbances. Thus it tells you nothing about the underlying cause of a chlld's suffering.

A November 8, 2023 article in The Wall Street Journal ("Children in Mental-Health Crisis Surge Into Hospital E.R.s") aroused several thoughts on why the crisis in child mental health treatment exists: the lack of public and doctor knowledge of child psychological development; psychiatry's false biological/genetic bias rather than the critical role played by parent-child interaction during early life when the basic ego capacities governing control of thinking and behavior, modulation of mood, and others develop; and the emphasis on psychotropic drugs with exaggerated benefits and downplayed side-effects. All leading to inaccurate and potentially harmful Emergency Room decisions and excess hospitalizations.