Dubious Physicians
EVANIER, DAVID
Dubious Physicians In a Darkness By James A. Wechsler Norton. 160 pp. $5.95 Reviewed by David Evanier Contributor, "Transatlantic Review"; instructor, Department of English, Douglas College,...
...When Wechsler attributed his son's improved condition partly to her, Dr...
...instructor, Department of English, Douglas College, Vancouver, British Columbia I approach this book with a special sense of identification...
...the therapist's response was "My, what a strong grip you have...
...There was no explanation of the weeks of silence, of his failure to get Michael into group therapy or to make any arrangement for continued management of Michael's treatment," Wechsler notes...
...His desperation casts a harshly clear light on the drug scene of the East Village, where he sought refuge, took LSD, corresponded with Richard Alpert-timothy Leary's former associate-and found transitory acquaintances sunk in the same morass as himself...
...James A. Wechsler's moving reminiscences, and the poetry and notes his son left behind, betray no rancor...
...Instead, what emerges is Michael's feeling of helplessness at the onslaught of irrationality, his continuing awareness of what was happening to him, and his heroic yet steadily eroding determination to become well...
...Wechsler admits that it is uncertain whether anyone could have saved his son from taking his life...
...Troubled, Dr...
...At one point, he told Wechsler he wished he could arrange for Michael to move into his own home...
...Later," Wechsler writes, "we were to find out that Dr...
...A few days later, Michael took an overdose of pills...
...Seventh characterized the relationship between Dr...
...Please don't let it hurt you...
...Eighth several times...
...The eight therapists (and the many young interns in the mental hospitals where Michael was treated) undoubtedly included men of good will...
...Sixth) to transfer Michael to another hospital where he could receive insulin therapy...
...You must be together, and go on with each other...
...The suicidal drive was constant...
...First to Eighth, a device that effectively expresses the growing despair he felt...
...At another, Wechsler entered Michael's hospital room to find his son lying in bed, Dr...
...Eighth, the last therapist, disregarded it, saying "Michael had promised her that if he ever contemplated suicide, he would talk to her at once...
...Seventh, one of the most zealous psychiatrists Michael was seeing, went off for a month's vacation without prior notice and did not contact the Wechslers for eight weeks...
...About the girl, Michael remarked to his father, "Maybe there will be a miracle...
...As time went on, Dr...
...Sixth of the friend's warning, Dr...
...First voiced disapproval of Michael's other therapists and hostility toward his girl friend Betty...
...Cut off from people by his recurrent confinements in five mental hospitals for a total of 26 months, he had difficulty making friends and went to public "singles" parties...
...Mike...
...When apprised by Dr...
...Each time it was some variant of the phrase: 'She's not good for you.'" Dr...
...he had a commitment to finish a book, he said...
...Sixth called Dr...
...After Dr...
...Soon, his father recalls, "He was playing his flute grimly and obsessively...
...It's what I've done...
...Wechsler called Dr...
...Don't blame yourselves, or anyone...
...First seated beside him, "the doctor's arm extended behind Michael's head...
...In the hands of experts who could not even agree with or trust each other, the Wechslers, parents and son, traveled through a maze, frozen in confusion...
...His father hired me as a copy-boy in 1955, though I did not last long at the paper...
...The next morning he called back, and she asked how he was...
...Once, trying to break through Dr...
...Eighth...
...Sixth's insistence on secrecy, Dr...
...Yet what stands out is their conflicting advice and their alternating concern and disinterest...
...Later, that image was confirmed when Michael tried to jump from the window of their apartment and was pulled to the floor by his father...
...Eighth informed Michael of what the friend had said...
...Wechsler told Dr...
...Sixth (whom he had originally recommended to Wechsler) as well as obstructing the attempts of Dr...
...Considering his patient's suicidal state, the doctor's behavior seems unconscionable, but by the time the incident occurred the Wechslers were no longer surprised by anything...
...Even more surreal, however, were the experiences Michael had over a period of nine years with the eight separate therapists he consulted-some of whom contradicted and criticized each other, prescribed widely different forms of treatment, and refused to see the parents at all...
...The muted style of In a Darkness forcefully conveys the pain of Michael's suffering...
...When the family pediatrician found no evidence of such a condition, Dr...
...she said it must have been an accident, and suggested an autopsy...
...Seventh (recommended by Dr...
...Its causes seemed inexplicable: He had been a model student and son until, upon graduating from Fieldston High School, he abruptly announced that he wanted to see a psychiatrist...
...Unsparing of himself and aware of the depths of his son's illness, Wechsler tries to avoid passing judgment...
...From then on, his descent (with a few reprieves) was rapid...
...But so, too, was Michael's dignity and self-awareness, as he fought the depression induced by the atmosphere of mental hospitals and the mean-inglessness of the market research job he took to keep going...
...I never experienced suicidal impulses or psychosis...
...Seventh did, in fact, eventually contact them and offer his unlisted outof-state number-a gesture too small and too late, coming as it did from a therapist who had promised the parents so much...
...First, the psychiatrist with whom Michael had the deepest attachment for most of the nine years, is chilling...
...Michael's "illness," on the other hand, struck without warning and overwhelmed him, despite his every effort to resist it...
...I am just two years older than Michael Wechsler, son of the New York Post editorial page editor, would be had he not taken his life in 1969 at the age of 26...
...First's hostility, Wechsler grasped his hand warmly...
...First and Michael as "unhealthy," Wechsler decided to terminate it...
...The image of gentle defiance and disturbance typifies Michael...
...For instance, Wechsler reports that at the moment his son first told him of his disturbance, an image passed through his mind of Michael sitting on a window ledge...
...His farewell note to his parents read: "Sorry, but one can't keep every promise...
...Despite Dr...
...First...
...In the conversation that followed, it became evident that Dr...
...But here the parallel ends, for mine was a standard Port-noyan condition that slowly, if painfully, receded...
...And several years before Michael I began my own rounds of the city's therapists, seeking help from those seers behind closed doors...
...During the day he walked around the neighborhood, suddenly pausing to aim his music at startled passers-by and dogs...
...First was undermining the work of Dr...
...according to Betty, he had actively tried to discourage it...
...First objected, "It's not Betty...
...The Wechslers never heard from him again before or after Michael's suicide...
...One night, after attending a gathering advertised in the Village Voice," his father recounts, "he came home and exclaimed with heartbreaking bitterness, 'You don't know what it's like to be so damn lonely.' " While the mystery of mental illness is one of the central concerns of the book, it also abounds in other kinds of imponderables...
...I'm all shook up," he replied...
...Eighth of the note...
...We are given moving descriptions of his efforts to maintain a relationship with his girl friend, and his own written accounts of how the illness took over against his will...
...In the end, it was not a psychiatrist but a casual friend of Michael's who detected that he was about to commit suicide...
...But from my own somewhat similar though less extreme experience, I must agree with his conclusion: "If there is a single message in these pages, it is that those who see in Michael some resemblance to someone they love resist being intimidated by professional counsel and place some faith in their own instincts...
...First's involvement was, to say the least, unprofessional...
...Wechsler identifies the therapists only as Drs...
...First denied having said it existed, thus driving a wedge between father and son...
...Eighth had defied him by telling Michael...
...He repeatedly told Wechsler that he could not understand why Dr...
...First not only disparaged the value of Betty's companionship...
...Initially refusing to see Wechsler personally, he mentioned during their first telephone conversation that Michael was suffering "rectal bleeding," usually an indication of youthful homosexual activity...
...In the middle of one night we found him in the driveway performing on it while standing on top of our car...
...Michael angrily denied it, fearing any further hospitalization...
...When he came to see them at last, he reported he was leaving the city and moving to another state...
...Wechsler comments, "It was said soberly, without any manic light dancing in his eyes...
...One therapist gave the Wechslers permission to mail the checks directly to him, but allowed no other form of communication...
...There was a terrible pause," he writes...
...The picture he draws of Dr...
...As they talked, Nancy entered the room and handed her husband Michael's suicide note, which she had just found...
...Ultimately, there were episodes too sick to be equivocal...
...His wife Nancy telephoned the message to Dr...
Vol. 55 • July 1972 • No. 14
