Correspondence
Correspondence TERRORIST PSYCHOS PAUL R. MCHUGH'S "A Psychiatrist Looks at Terrorism" (Dec. 10) made for entertaining reading, but I don't think it represents a true psychiatric perspective....
...The only terrorist McHugh mentions by name is the Unabomber, and I would be reassured if he had clarified whether he had spent time interviewing the Unabomber clinically—even once...
...Such a Republican-Tory split, unlikely and illogical though it is, would be mutually disastrous...
...So listen to me, not depressing, killjoy Michael Linton: Go to Walt Disney World in the off-season, buy an annual pass, stay two weeks, and come back a little earlier the following year and do it again...
...Does McHugh think that the analogous change of heart will occur in the Islamic world...
...On the grounds that he is going to "defend [America] against confusion— and here America certainly needs help," McHugh promises to open our eyes "about what terrorists do, how they think, the steps necessary to protect ourselves from them . . . ," and he reassures us that this illumination will be based on "observations that...
...YALE KRAMER Professor Emeritus University of Medicine and Dentistry of New Jersey New York, NY PAUL R. MCHUGH makes some good points, but I find his terrorism analysis unconvincing...
...MICHAEL REZNICEK Lewiston, ID Anyone who takes what a psychiatrist says seriously about anything but what he has seen in his own office should have his head examined...
...It was not a logical wish, as the flattening of, let's say, the Kaaba, would be a terrible crime against humanity, regardless of whether anyone was killed...
...JAY WEISER Associate Professor of Law Baruch College New York, NY CORRECTION BECAUSE OF AN EDITING ERROR in the December 17 issue of The Weekly Standard, Johanna Spyri was named as the author of Johann David Wyss's The ^•wiss Family Robinson...
...They had taken one of our most prominent symbols and destroyed it...
...After laboriously arguing from one unsubstantiated jargon-laden notion to another, McHugh finally arrives at the conclusion we've been waiting for—a psychiatrist's way of dealing with terrorists, which is that ". . . to stop terrorism, the American government should devote its energies to interrupting the terrorists' behavior in all its aspects...
...Although New Labour—like the Democratic party—has come to shed much of its aversion to free trade, the military, and private enterprise, it remains smitten with multiculturalism and suspicious of patriotism and tradition...
...Linton misses Walt Disney's true purpose and achievement...
...I seriously doubt even many adults were thinking of Vietnam when taking the jungle ride...
...These, he assumes, are very "similar matters" because terrorists are fanatics (despite never having examined a large number of them), and fanatics suffer from "overvalued ideas," as do the anorectics and alcoholics he has treated...
...McHugh, on the other hand, approaches terrorism in the same way that he seems to approach psychiatry: with common sense...
...Maybe Disney CEO Michael Eisner will turn the jungle ride into a new attraction where al Qaeda fighters pop up from the river and spray riders with fake automatic weapons fire...
...Meanwhile, Republicans and Tories detest multiculturalism and want to reduce taxes and government spending...
...The world will seem a better place as a result...
...We might infer from the cagey way in which McHugh avoids direct reference to any clinical observations ("I had the good fortune to have interviewed 37 terrorists...
...For weeks I longed for a similar event to occur somewhere in "their" realm...
...Disney today still does, not perfectly, but far more than the alternatives, and a good deal more than America as a whole...
...While I have never been to Disneyland, my wife and I and our four kids have spent more than 100 days of the last decade in Walt Disney World, and I sincerely doubt that Disney World is the joyful place my family loves while Disneyland has become a cesspool...
...But a healthy dose of realism can prevent future blunders...
...Most importantly, both parties are unashamed of their respective countries' sovereignty, traditions, and culture...
...How soon...
...BENNETT PARSONS Bermuda Dunes, CA PEARL HARBOR AND 9/11 IN "AFTER PEARL HARBOR" (Dec...
...Then special operations units could emerge from the jungle and take them out...
...They never speak well of one another...
...It would have been bizarre for them to indict their 1930s life as "soft, materialistic or corrupt" when it had actually been harsh...
...spring from long clinical experience with similar matters...
...Spyri is the author of Heidi, that other popular Swiss children's book of the nineteenth century...
...Paul R. McHugh...
...He could rename the attraction "The bin Laden Hunter...
...JASON BOATRIGHT Austin, TX OH WHAT YOU DO MICKEY I READ WITH INTEREST Michael Linton's article on the collapse of Disneyland ("The Decline and Fall of Disneyland," Dec...
...LARRY EDELSTEIN San Francisco, CA PAUL R. MCHUGH RESPONDS: To Larry Edelstein, I would say that it is not the Islamic world, but the Western world, that is my analog for interested parties fearful of the consequences of behavioral interruption...
...To Dr...
...But I wanted it nonetheless...
...Brooks correctly says that we can't afford to obsess about our failings when we need resolution and action...
...That even applies to the distinguished Dr...
...WHAT WE'RE ALL ABOUT NOW THAT THE SCRAPBOOK has smeared the Institute for Public Accuracy with a cartoonish, McCarthylike article ("The All-News-Is-Bad-News Left," Dec...
...I went on the jungle ride in the late sixties, and I can assure you that Vietnam was the farthest thing from my mind...
...of course I was about 12 years old, so my political knowledge was not as sophisticated as Linton's...
...So the patient is analogous to the terrorist, and the family to the Islamic world...
...35 males, 2 females from 7 different countries") that he has had no clinical experience with any terrorists, but has had some experience in the treatment of anorectics and alcoholics...
...Disney asked, roughly, "Where can a daddy, with two little girls, take them where he can have some fun, too...
...but it cannot continue to be such an ally unless the Tories can keep Tony Blair from making Britain one of the many states in a soon-to-be united country called "Europe...
...I was yearning not merely for the deaths of hated enemies, but for the highly visible destruction of their symbols as retaliation for the destruction of ours...
...Kramer's explosion I can only offer a modification of an aphorism of Samuel Johnson's: "Psychiatrists are an honest people...
...I presume that the prevailing wisdom in the psychiatric community is that the patient's family will eventually come around to the view that the treatment is for the good of the patient...
...10), David Brooks paints a picture of decline: how brave and optimistic we were then versus how gloomy and self-doubting now...
...We should be grateful to McHugh and the editors of The Weekly Standard for demonstrating once again that psychiatrists, psychologists, psychoanalysts, social workers, psychiatric nurses, etc., have little or nothing to contribute to national political policy, and that attempts to suggest that mental health experts know more about the affairs of the real world than any other informed citizen is a mischievous abuse of professionalism...
...His assertion is that these concerns can be likened to those of a psychiatric patient's family for the patient's autonomy...
...Mainline psychiatric dogma would have defined terrorism in terms of genetic or developmental aberrations resulting in neurotransmitter imbalances requiring selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors (SSRIs...
...Disney then partook of the American values we all miss so much...
...In 1941, the Great Depression was lifting thanks to the war boom, so Americans finally had some reason to be optimistic about their economic future...
...I also experienced a profound sense of embarrassment...
...The true beauty of Walt Disney World is not found by comparing today's parks with those in Linton's memories from the 1950s...
...Since then, we have experienced Korea and Vietnam, and have come to realize that wars can devolve into bloody stalemates...
...This only goes to show how the left cannot let go of the Vietnam War...
...I also find disappointing McHugh's dismissal of those who are concerned that iatrogenic effects will arise from military action...
...Britain is currently our only ally able and inclined to fight in foreign wars for freedom and its national self-interest...
...The Vietnam War colors their entire existence, especially in foreign policy matters...
...It is found by comparing Disneyland then with America in the 1950s, and Disney theme parks today with America today...
...Finally, the civilian population was at little risk in 1941, which is obviously not the case today...
...That's the genius of Disney: The whole family, all ages, can have fun together...
...My visceral reaction to the collapse of the first tower was not entirely due to my comprehension of the massive death and pain inflicted...
...It is with this hackneyed, Polonius-like advice that McHugh proposes to "defend the nation" against confusion and the depredations of terror...
...There was similar reason to be optimistic about the war, since the United States' previous conflict had been World War I, in which we had entered late, suffered few casualties, and won a huge victory...
...But, perhaps sharing The Weekly Standard's disdain for root causes, he neglects several realities of each period that explain much of this difference...
...NORMAN SOLOMON Institute for Public Accuracy San Francisco, CA LOVE TORIES MICHAEL GONZALEZ is wrong to forecast a split between Republicans and British Conservatives ("The Blair Bitch Project," Dec...
...JAMES ECKERT Rochester, NY DOES MICHAEL LINTON really think that kids were thinking of booby-traps and the Viet Cong while floating through Disneyland's jungle ride in 1969...
...That is the last we hear about the doctor's "clinical experience...
...Republicans should therefore help the Tories preserve an independent, classically liberal Britain...
...3), readers are invited to find out what the institute actually does by visiting www.accuracy.org to take a look at our news releases that cover a wide range of subjects...
Vol. 7 • December 2001 • No. 15
