Letters to the Editor
FredrickBernanke
Published Letters: 136 Editor's Choice: 8
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Form & Content
[Read the article: Hillary without tears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Dayum, Lady, you sure can write. The content was interesting as well.
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Ignorance (of your existence.)
[Read the article: Hillary without tears]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]This Hillary article was my first encounter with you. [I have lived in a small, but warm, cave in San Diego for 25+ years.)
I did some quick online research. You're a freakin genius...one who can write like a dumb-ass artist.
I'm sure we disagree mightly about the content, but I can sense your connection to Heidegger, Foucault, Derrida, Plath, Rimbaud and the swarm of nutcase, but language-centered, writers whom I worship.
You are a Wonder-With-Words; what those words say is much less important to me--a profound non-intellectual--than how they make me feel.
I bow before your command and love of Language, and intend to read lots of your stuff.
Irrespective of the meaning of what he says/writes, Heidegger's writing (as well as some few others) brings tears to my eyes and deep breathes to my lungs, much like Beethoven's work does; Their achievements make me proud to be a human being....Prof. Bloom, in my humble, uneducated opinion has never reached thoses heights.
You, gay-babe, maybe have.
Please keep writing. I will make it my business to keep reading.
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What This Nation Needs Is a Good Old Fashioned Dose of Meloncholia, Right Jerome?
[Read the article: Don't be happy, worry]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I'm having a bit of trouble discerning what the author's specific complaint is regarding this class of drugs.
He does not question their efficacity, but merely cites the small percentage of patients who experience paradoxical effects such as an increase in depression and suicidal thoughts. Such reactions--a very small percentage of users--are common in virtually all meds. Some poor soul rubs the prescribed anti-redness cream on her pinkish forehead at night and wakes up in the morning to find the Crimson Tide has suddenly taken the field. But it's a rare reaction.
Psychotherapy, though brilliantly conceived and practiced by some of the most caring and thoughtful people in the health care arena, doesn't work. My hunch--and that's all it is--is that the rate of success of psychotherapy is roughly equal to the rate of paradoxical responses of those under drug therapy. Mere loquaciousness is overmatched when its opponent is real depression.
Which brings up the one issue that the author somewhat glosses over. Are physicians, with advertising support from Big Pharma, prescribing these drugs to people who do not need them? I live in San Diego, where the sun shines 300+ days a year. On cloudy days, most people I talk with feel "depressed," they say. If physicians are doling out Paxil to them, it is more a commentary on their (the physicians) unethical or ignorant behaviour than it is on Prozac, Paxil, Zoloft and the drug companies that created them.
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The Rope-a-Dope, Rudy & Ali
[Read the article: Punch-drunk Rudy]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Ali used the rope-a-dope strategy against the younger and ferociously powerful George Foreman in a championship fight 2 or 3 decades ago.
Ali laid on the ropes, his arms and boxing gloves covering his face, and allowed Foreman to pummel away at his body for 2 1/2 minutes of the 3 minute rounds. In the last thirty seconds of the round, Ali turned aggressor and landed significant blows to his arm weary opponent until in round eight, with less than thirty seconds remaining (if memory serves me), the older, shrewder Ali landed a viscious right cross to the chin of the exhausted Foreman and knocked him out. (Foreman later called himself the "dope" in the rope-a-dope strategy of Ali.)
The questions with Rudy's use of this strategy are (1) has he thrown any punches at all in the earlier rounds to show the judges (voters) that he's still in the fight and (2) does he have a knock-out punch left in him to win Florida.
So far, he has not shown in any way that he has the Greatness and the mental and physical firepower of the Champion Ali.
His only hope, it seems, is that his other two opponents knock each other out.
As a native New Yorker, I apologize for writing this, Mr. G..
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damnthatxanadu
[Read the article: Don't be happy, worry]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I sincerely congratulate you on the success you have enjoyed in your practice and thought that I was indicating my high regard for psychotherapists by explicitly stating that they were among the most brilliant and caring practitioners in the health care field.
Furthermore, I challenged the ethics and intelligence of physicians prescribing these drugs to people who did not need them, but in no way impugned the ethics, sincerity or intelligence of pyschotherapy practioners. Also, I qualified my opinion regarding the efficacity of psychotherapy by calling it a "hunch."
My opinions have their roots in personal experience with psychotherapists since I was 16. In 3 states, 4 therapists of both sexes--all smart as hell--none of them could understand why I was depressed, yet alone "cure" or even attenuate the depression.
While in the waiting room of one of those therapists who shared offices with a pyschiatrist, I picked up a pamphlet on Paxil. It described my symtomology as if I had written it myself. I saw the shrink; got a prescription, and my life changed.
Maybe if I had met you, my life would also have changed.
Anyway, I meant no insult to pyschotherapists, and certainly none to one as successful as you.