Letter to the editor from Fred Griffin which was published in the September 15 issue of The Birmingham News (Birmingham, AL).

Letters to the Editor
The Birmingham News
September 15, 2008

 WE MUST FIGHT FOR OUR COUNTRY, BUT NOT ENGAGE IN KNEE-JERK REACTIONS

    In watching the Republican national convention, references to fighting and combat appeared to dominate the rhetoric of the candidates. For example, in a front-page article in the September 5 Birmingham News, Senator McCain is quoted as saying, “Fight with me.  Fight with me. Fight with me.  Fight for our country.”

 I began to wonder just how far our country has been able to process the trauma we experienced on 9/11.  I am reminded about my work with Vietnam veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder for whom a variety of even non-threatening stimuli trigger reflexive violent reactions.  Neuroscientists tell us that this set of responses is largely because the emotional experience of the overwhelming trauma becomes lodged in the deep structures of the brain and bypasses the cerebral cortex, the part of the brain that permits us to truly think about our experience.  Therefore, we react, rather than reflect-a
knee-jerk reaction.

       This country was violently invaded on 9/11.  We may still be stuck in our own post-traumatic reactions to this event.  One might also wonder if McCain is somehow haunted by post-traumatic reactions to his own private ordeal as a prisoner-of-war, which he so courageously
endured.

      Of course we must fight for our country.  I am in no way advocating for passivity.  But we should not engage in knee-jerk reactions that are robbed of thoughtful reflection about additional avenues to create safety for our country and to restore our country’s standing on the world stage.

Fred L. Griffin, M.D.

To the Editor, 
                      Your article on psychiatry and the rich (July 7th, 2008: Age of Riches/ Therapists to the Elite) is deeply offensive to every person, rich and poor alike. It demeans the daring of poor people who seek help and rich people who seek help. It even demeans the daring of psychoanalysis as it reaches out to help human minds, rich and poor, to recover the self esteem neurosis ran off with. In my experience as a psychoanalyst the human mind transcends poverty and wealth. The conflicts of the poor are the conflicts of the rich, depth psychology , which began transplacental without a cent to its name on its complex journey toward the grave, being what it is. Any psychiatrist who does not know this basic existential truth should hang up his shingle!  One expects more from journalism than this caricature of the human mind and all its complexities. This article is a perverse literary achievement that manages to demean doctors and patients, wealthy citizens and poor citizens in one fell satirical swoop. Shame on you New York Times!
                                            Sincerely,
 
                                        Eugene J. Mahon MD

The following is an unpublished letter to the editor of the New York Times by Leon Hoffman 

To the Editor,
 
Thank you very much for the story on Charles Brenner.
 
I thought your felicitous phrasing of conflict and compromise formation theory has no peer. 

The following is an unpublished letter to the editor of the New York Times  by Stephen Rittenberg and Herbert Wyman

To The Editor:

As psychoanalytic colleagues of the late Charles Brenner, and as founding Editors of the Journal of Clinical Psychoanalysis, we applaud the accuracy with which the obituary described Dr. Brenner’s work and the impact it had on our field. At the same time we must observe that the obituary was grotesquely inaccurate in its descriptions of Charlie Brenner as a “ruthless”  “relentless”  “dismissive” “intransigent purist.” We speak both from personal experience of Charlie’s warmth and generosity, and from our professional experience of the way he welcomed reasoned criticism. The statement which we found especially wrongheaded was that there was “a limit to the extent to which his thinking evolved” and that this limitation contributed to the decline of psychoanalysis. The opposite is true. The only “limitation” to Charlie’s thinking was his unwillingness to abandon scientific thinking in favor of fashionable cant. Charlie’s thinking evolved continuously throughout his long life: Just one month before his death he presented a paper in which he further developed the new ideas which have in fact revivified psychoanalysis and will contribute to its evolution throughout the 21st century.

                                                                  Sincerely,

                                                                 Stephen M Rittenberg MD
                                                                  Herbert M Wyman MD

Letter to the Editor by Jane S.  Hall  article in The Science Times on Tuesday February 26th

Richard Freidman, M.D. raises an important question in his article re. the psychiatrist’s own psychotherapy. The public needs to be made aware that as psychiatrists become less interested in delivering psychotherapy, replacing talk therapy with drugs, there is a wide network of psychologists and social workers, licensed, qualified, and with advanced degrees in psychotherapy. These practitioners have graduated from institutes (usually 4 years of training) which includes their own psychotherapy as a requirement for graduation.

Jane S. Hall, LCSW, FIPA
A founder of the New York School for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy
 212-675-7364
 49 West 12th St.
 NYC, NY 10011