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• Saturday, January 27, 2007 04:24 AM

  Thanks, J.C. Miller. A pro's corrections are always welcome.

  I only have a layman's knowledge of psychiatry, plus two very futile experiences with shrinks; one at about age 17, including a short stay in a hospital, and another at age 30. I found both frustrating because the doctors involved could have pointed me in some direction towards discovering my problems, but preferred to milk the bank accounts of my parents, and later my own, with trying to make me feel "comfortable" as I recounted the pointless crap of my previous week.

  I think less of psychiatrists than of counselors or therepists, who are willing to offer advice and suggest possible therepies to folks with standard emotional problems.

  But the tendency of celebrities to use psychiatric treatment and rehab clinics as a "beard" is an old one. Peter Lawford, peripheral member of the Rat Pack and relative to the Kennedys, once went to a desert rehab center. He would take long walks out in the desert at night...where he'd meet up with a helicopter with a delivery of fresh drugs and booze. Nobody seemed to have minded it, apparently not even the clinic's staff.

  If I thought psychiatry provided effective and practical solutions to emotional problems, I'd be tempted to raise money to buy therepy for that gay black guy who posted a violent screed a post or two before this one. Instead, I would probably send him a couple of good self-help books and tapes. I'm neither black nor gay, but my life has been full of undeserved ass-whuppings and contempt. And I've managed to get beyond it and live a life largely free of self-destructive hatred.

  —tomreedtoon Read tomreedtoon's other letters
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