Weaving (or Unweaving) the Web of Schizophrenia

Thomas Mitchell Blaise Shepherd

Former president of the Joplin (Missouri)

Youth Council of Protestant Churches (UCYM)

~ American Native Son ~ American Born Leader ~

Mr. Shepherd is also the author of

The Crime of Psychiatry

Biology & Schizophrenia

The Artificial Man

and other publications

by Thomas M. Shepherd

Schizophrenia is a catch-all label for

a variety of behavioral manifestations.

The social and environmental influences that

give birth to and perpetuate a schizophrenic personality

are typically ignored by the psychiatric establishment.

Present-day neuroleptic drug treatment typically

produces a biochemical lobotomy.

Schizophrenia is, in my opinion, not a disease. Diagnosing someone with schizophrenia is a form of legalized character assassination, commonly used for the purpose of discrediting and disenfranchising a relatively normal individual.

In many instances the individual diagnosed with schizophrenia or any other mental disorder is the most sane member of his or her family and community and probably more sane and intelligent than the psychiatrist or clinical psychologist or psychiatric social worker making such a diagnosis.

Typically, the diagnosis of schizophrenia is applied to an individual who has experienced feelings of abandonment, rejection and ongoing cruel disparagement by significant others during his or her childhood and adolescence and even young adult years.

Unfortunately, methods typically utilized by psychiatry to treat so-called schizophrenia or any other diagnosed psychiatric condition seem to be more of a nemesis than an aid and only intensify the typical patient’s feelings of abandonment.

Psychiatry has been characterized by Thomas Szasz, M. D. and other leading scientific professionals as “an industry of death.”

To declare that an individual is suffering from a delusion is a mere hypothesis, which in all probability has no basis in fact. Such is the belief of R. D. Laing, M. D., Thomas Szasz, M. D., Jean-Paul Sartre, myself and others.

Psychiatric medicine, like other forms of medicine, is for the most part a form of governmental and corporate fraud. The patient, more often than not, is merely a victim of deception, as well as of ongoing abject cruelty, by examining physicians, clinical psychologists, nurses and social workers.

Ironically, the treatment methods prescribed for treating schizophrenia or any other mental illness are as barbaric today as were the treatment methods employed 100 years ago.

Although the typical psychiatric patient has exhibited a relatively appropriate response to extraordinarily stressful social and environmental living conditions, a psychiatric evaluation is all too typically designed to suggest the patient has exhibited an inappropriate reaction to relatively normal events.

The underlying cause of the patient’s behavior is typically and conveniently skewed. Thus, from the onset, the psychiatric patient is depicted as a subhuman entity – as a wild animal of sorts that must be caged and/or drugged for the benefit of everyone concerned. The psychiatric evaluation is in essence a legalized form of character assassination.

The treatment methods most commonly employed – psychotherapy and psychotropic drug treatment – do not benefit the patient. They enhance the bankroll of the psychiatrist, the clinical psychologist, the psychiatric social worker, the psychiatric nurse and those who make their living in the pharmaceutical industry.

NAMI – the National Alliance for the Mentally Ill – is not designed to benefit the psychiatric patient. It is a bureaucracy designed to benefit the pharmaceutical corporations that manufacture psychotropic drugs and the psychiatrists, clinical psychiatrists and other psychiatric workers that make their living in the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry.

Psychotherapy is designed to demean and humiliate the patient – to leave the patient with the feeling that he or she is a worthless and subnormal human being.

Psychotropic drug treatment with neuroleptics (a/k/a antipsychotics) – the psychiatric drug of choice – typically produces a chemical lobotomy, thus turning the patient into a non-thinking, bio-chemical robot. Ironically, so-called antipsychotics and antidepressants typically increase the risk of suicide and increase the incidence of bipolar or manic behavior.

Although commonly classified as major tranquilizers, antipsychotic drugs, to include so-called atypical antipsychotic drugs, typically result in akathisia – characterized by inner restlessness and inability to sit still. The drugs do not tranquilize the patient – they in effect are chemical strait jackets.

Neuroleptic malignant syndrome (NMS) is a life-threatening neurological disorder most often caused by an adverse reaction to neuroleptic or antipsychotic medications.

Neuroleptic induced deficit syndrome (NIDS) is another term used by medical journalist and author Robert Whitaker, to describe the seriously debilitating side effects of antipsychotic drugs.

Patients generally are not warned in advance of the malignant side-effects by the physicians prescribing such drugs. Physicians typically exaggerate the benefits (none) derived from taking antipsychotic medications and minimize probable side effects, some of which are irreversible.

In some instances, physicians and psychiatric nurses hand out pharmaceutical samples of neuroleptic or antipsychotic drugs, thus circumventing the law. Latuda is the brand name of one of the newer of such drugs being promoted through pharmaceutical free samples given to health care providers.

Cover-ups within the mental health system are commonplace.

In many instances psychiatric drugs are more harmful than contraband street drugs. They’re just legal.

Antipsychotic drugs also commonly result in excessive weight gain, blurred vision and they severely impair one’s ability to reason and to drive a motor vehicle or to operate other machinery.

Antipsychotic drugs also commonly result in breast enlargement in males and females, as they interfere with the body’s ability to produce and maintain adequate levels of testosterone.

Females taking antipsychotic drugs run a significant risk in giving birth to a child with a wide variety of deformities. Males taking antipsychotic drugs report an inability to obtain a complete and satisfying ejaculation during intercourse.

The so-called anti-psychotic drugs also severely weaken one’s immune system and cardiovascular system, thereby making the patient more vulnerable to a variety of forms of cancer and heart disease.

The psychotropic drugs also make the patient vulnerable for ruthless exploitation by more functional members of society, to include those practicing other forms of medicine. The medicated psychiatric patient thus becomes a walking zombie of sorts.

It is my opinion that the individual who becomes identified as schizophrenic or mentally ill is an individual trapped in an inescapable no-win checkmate situation by significant others – to include members of his (or her) nuclear family, school classmates, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and psychiatric aides.

Because the so-called schizophrenic is somewhat autistic (the cause of which is not known), he (or she) spends much of his (or her) childhood and adolescence in a dreamlike state of mind, a state of mind that generally continues throughout adulthood.

If the schizophrenic is provided a somewhat protective environment, he can generally survive. However, schizophrenic people are unable to make the transition from childhood to adulthood. Why? Because the schizophrenic has had the props knocked out from under him.

Because some schizophrenic people (those labeled schizophrenic) tend to remain in a somewhat dreamlike state of mind, oblivious to much of what is going on around them, there is a tendency for elders (parents, teachers, coaches, or peers) to jar them or shock out of their self-absorption through aberrant psychological conditioning or what psychiatry calls tough love.

Such conditioning only causes additional damage to the schizophrenic’s state of mind, as he (or she) is being punished for harmless, non-violent, non-criminal behavior. Thus, the schizophrenic’s concept of right and wrong is severely warped out of shape by parents, teachers, therapists and even military drill instructors, generally before he has even reached his majority.

Daydreaming, I might conjecture, is not a sign of illness. It is a sign of brilliance, of creativity. Albert Einstein, Isaac Newton, Mark Twain, Steve Jobs, Jeff Bezos, and Bill Gates were/are all daydreamers.

It has been conjectured that there is a biological cause of schizophrenia or emotional instability. The failure of the hypothalamus section of the brain to develop or mature may, it has been conjectured, be at the root of the problem. The hypothalamus is believed to be the organ that enables an individual to modulate or regulate his (or her) emotions – to react appropriately to environmental stimuli.

The schizophrenic may calmly watch a movie, yet only sporadically focus on the movie. Or a schizophrenic may, while in a classroom situation, miss much of what is being said by the instructor, as his mind generally is absorbed in inner thoughts. It should be remembered that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs are/were college dropouts. Through the realization of their daydreams – by connecting with others like themselves – they were thus able to make remarkable contributions to society.

People typically diagnosed with schizophrenia do not have supportive parents; they typically have egocentric, manipulative parents, who thwart the efforts of their own children to realize their dreams. Their surrogate parents – the football coaches, the military drill instructors, the psychiatrists – typically only reinforce the destructive process that was initialized in the home by the patient’s own parents and in the neighborhood by the parents of their ruthlessly competitive childhood and adolescent classmates.

As a result of the schizophrenic’s presumed inability to concentrate or focus, the schizophrenic becomes society’s scapegoat, as it were. The fact is a schizophrenic individual may not have any problem in concentrating; in many instances the so-called schizophrenic’s ability to concentrate is far superior to that of so-called normal people. In Freudian psychodynamic terminology, the schizophrenic has been stripped of ego defense mechanisms. He has no one on his ball team, as it were. He thus very creatively invents his own imaginary playing field and ball team, a survival coping mechanism.

Aberrant psychological conditioning in which an individual is severely traumatized – brutalized – by significant others can permanently rewire the brain – desensitize and destabilize the brain – and military training is designed to desensitize trainees in order to make them more willing to kill, according to Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, retired West Point professor of psychology and authority on the dynamics of killing and the psychological effects warfare. As a result of such conditioning, according to Grossman, a victim’s brain is thus rewired to the extent that such an individual thereafter reacts as would a pit bull react when exposed to similar trauma. The brain’s resiliency is thus permanently destabilized.

Thus, there appear to be biological and environmental causes of what the medical profession characterizes as schizophrenia or bi-polar disorder or personality disorders or attention deficit disorder or post traumatic stress disorder or Asperger’s syndrome or emotional instability.

To a certain extent, according to some of the leading experts in the field of neurobiology, all of the above conditions are merely a variety of forms of the same disorder – schizophrenia – of which there is a wide variety of social, environmental or developmental causes. No two individuals have the same symptoms.

However, a psychiatric diagnosis is all too often a mechanism used by significant others – a close relative, a peer, an employer or other associate – to discredit an individual. The typical parent (of a schizophrenic), spouse (of a schizophrenic), psychiatrist or therapist is typically so entrapped in his (or her) own form of schizophrenia that he (or she) cannot see the forest for the trees. Such an individual transfers his (or her) own feelings of inadequacy onto his (or her) scapegoat – the schizophrenic patient or client.

Military psychiatrists typically deny the evidence presented by Professor Grossman in an attempt to place the blame for military-training induced mental destabilization on a pre-existing and perhaps inherited genetic weakness or childhood aberrant conditioning in the home or at school. Evidence does suggest that such factors may indeed preempt a breakdown during military service, however they are not likely to be the sole cause of the breakdown.

The pharmaceutical industry typically profits from psychiatric diagnosis by claiming brain destabilization can be corrected or stabilized with the psychotropic drugs it manufactures – neuroleptics and antidepressants or so-called mood stabilizers.

The fact is that psychotropic drugs do NOT stabilize the brain – they in fact only further accelerate brain atrophy. Psychotropic drugs also severely impair the auto-immune system, placing victims of psychotropic drug treatment at risk for a variety of forms of cancer and heart disease.

Brain stabilization can best be maintained by consistently adhering to a predominantly vegetarian diet of vegetable proteins, to include fresh greens, fresh fruit, oat meal, and shelled soybeans and by avoiding certain processed foods, most dairy products and by adhering to a regular exercise routine to include aerobics, jogging, light weight-lifting and/or outdoor bicycling.

Once an individual has experienced aberrant psychological conditioning, the end result is not likely to be cured, as the brain’s resiliency to stress is weakened. The most a victim of such conditioning can do is to attempt to live with the condition – minimizing contact with difficult others, avoiding caffeine products, avoiding alcoholic beverages, and avoiding any other drugs – to include manufactured psychotropic drugs – that alter one’s brain chemistry. Any such individual runs an increased risk of incurring subsequent mental breakdowns when environmental influences weaken the individual’s defenses. It bears repeating that there is no cure – the vulnerability to recurrent breakdowns remains throughout one’s life.

There is no conclusive evidence to support the psychiatric claim that schizophrenia or any other diagnosed mental illness is an inherited condition – or that one has necessarily inherited vulnerability. The schizophrenic-prone individual may have a tendency to either under-respond or over-respond to social and environmental stimuli.

Severe social and environmental stressful events tend to destabilize the brain chemistry of such an individual, resulting in erratic and unmodulated behavior. At such moments, perceptions may become somewhat clouded or distorted.

My Story

I was born and reared in a home in which there were no adult males present. My maternal grandmother was the acknowledged homemaker or head of the household. She was a quiet, refined widow, who was 58 years old at the time of my birth. Her younger sister, a spinster 17 years younger than my grandmother, also resided with us during my early years.

My mom, who was separated from my father from the onset of my life, went to work while I was still an infant in order to provide for us. Our home was run somewhat as I would imagine a convent would be run, although we were nominal Presbyterians.

As a result of the way I was reared, I had no carnal knowledge, as it were, and assumed, until neighborhood boys informed me otherwise when I was about 9 or 10 years old, that all babies were delivered by the stork. I also assumed that all women were as virgin as was the Virgin Mary. I thus did not witness any lovemaking between my mom and any man and I do believe my mom, although abandoned by my father, chose celibacy as a way of life in his absence, as did my widowed grandmother and my great aunt.

As a result, we – my nuclear family and I – became the brunt of ongoing mockery and mean-spirited acts of cruelty by other neighborhood children, as well as by their parents, virtually all of whom were top-rated business and professional people, to include physicians, surgeons, lawyers, engineers, school teachers, small and large business proprietors or corporate managers.

I had one brother, 13 months older than I. While my brother was noticeably aggressive and domineering, I was somewhat passive and compliant and gradually became aware of the fact that I was a very slow learner. It was pointed out to my mom by my elementary school teachers that I was observed to daydream excessively in and out of the classroom. As a result of my tendency to daydream, I shied away from competitive sports, preferring to spend my free time alone or with other boys like myself – those of a similar temperament – creative-minded and inquisitive, yet loners of sorts.

As I mentioned, I was a chronic daydreamer. During my elementary and high school days, I recall spending an inordinate amount of time doodling during classroom lectures or attempting to quietly converse with those girls seated next to me. I was indeed a romanticist, as well as a daydreamer, from an early age. I fell in love with females – of all ages. My role models were the typical celebrity role models for young boys.

My spare time, at home, was spent designing and creating architectural models out of cardboard and cultivating an annual vegetable garden, both occupations which were encouraged by my mom and grandmom. I also regularly did the yard work at our home. My brother and I also mowed lawns, raked leaves, and did weeding for some of our neighbors during our early childhood.

My brother and I were both extremely independent minded and inventive from the onset of our lives. Following our mother’s marriage to Charles Shepherd, the two of us served as acolytes and altar boys at the local Episcopal Church and we were elected to and assumed leadership positions in the Young Peoples Service League, our church youth group.

My older brother John (Dudley Jr.), however, was extremely quick witted and academically at the top of his class. He excelled in virtually every endeavor he undertook, both academically and in the playing field. He was an outstanding Latin scholar, photographer, chemist, journalist, marksman, archer, and canoeist. He graduated from high school as a member of the National Honor Society, as a member of the award-winning debate team, as editor of the high school newspaper. He was an assistant scoutmaster from the age of twelve. Both of us served as Cub Scout den chiefs.

My closest childhood and adolescent pals and classmates, going back to my early childhood days, included Emery Carlyn Childress Jr., grandson of Missouri rancher and landowner Frank Childress, and Sam Hillhouse (later to become an Oklahoma bank CEO and the uncle of actor Brad Pitt).

Other close friends included Ross Thompson Roberts (later appointed to a federal judgeship by Ronald Reagan). The Ross T. Roberts Justice Center of Kansas City bears his name. Other pals included Virgil “ Buck” Jeans Jr., son of Dr. Virgil E. Jeans, a surgeon, and Robert Breckenridge Caldwell III, whose granddad, a top-notch corporation lawyer, was at the time chairman of the Fourth District Federal Reserve Bank.

William R. Thurston Jr., whose dad founded Thurston Chemical Company, a giant fertilizer factory, eventually acquired by W. R. Grace & Co., was also one of my closest childhood and adolescent friends.

Between the ages of 12 and 17, I dated Lynn Newcomb, who, while attending college, was selected to be a (fall 1958) Mademoiselle cover girl. Lynn was awarded a merit scholarship and graduated from Mt. Holyoke Class of 1960, during which she was a performer for the Mt. Holyoke synchronized swim team. Lybb was afterwards awarded a scholarship to study at the Boston Museum School of Art. Today she is a celebrated metal sculptor and printmaker. Her creations have appeared in leading museums throughout America – from Boston to Seattle. Lynn and I met in a Sunday school class at the Episcopal Church, where we were also members of the Young Peoples Service League, of which both of our moms were sponsors.

During junior high school, I was invited to a Y-Teen hayride by (Dr.) Neville Sue Graham Rapp, valedictorian of our high school class and later affiliated with St. Louis University as a research scientist, although I very apologetically reneged, as I was already dating Lynn Newcomb, who asked me to the same hayride later the same day, a decision I thereafter felt extremely conflicted over.

During high school, and while serving as president of the Episcopal Church Young Peoples Service League and as president of an interfaith youth organization, I dated Anne Friedheim, daughter of New York TV producer Robert Friedheim (The Annapolis Show).

I also dated Elsa Newman and her cousin Judy Newman, whose family founded Newman’s, a top-drawer Missouri department store. Elsa graduated from Stephens College in Missouri, then received a master’s degree in social work and married a man whose family were publishers of a Canadian newspaper.

While later studying in New York I dated and worked with Lisa Commager, daughter of author Henry Steele Commager. Lisa and I were cast together in a one-act Louis John Carlino play – Corner in the Morning. Lisa, who was a graduate of Radcliffe, Class of 1958, later studied at the Royal Academy of Dramatic Arts in London.

I also dated Patch (nee Glesness) MacKenzie, daughter of another New York television producer, who later (1982) starred in the thriller film Graduation Day. Patch was then living with her parents in Englewood. Her mom and dad invited me to spend a weekend with the family at their cabin in Newfoundland, New Jersey. Patch and I met in an acting class taught by Herbert Berghoff at the Berghoff Studio.

In terms of dating, I might mention, I usually played the field. If I dated a female, it was usually at her invitation and with the full approval of the female’s parents.

During junior high and high school, I had dates with approximately 30 females. Most of the occasions were Y-Teen, Masonic Temple or Episcopal Church social functions or at formal or semi-formal private parties held at the local country club or the woman’s club or at the Masonic Temple or the Episcopal Church. Both of my grandfathers, as well as their own grandfathers, were Scottish Rite Masons, as was my stepfather.

Ironically, some of my male friends or peers quite obviously resented me merely because an eligible female’s parents took the initiative in inviting me for dinner at their home and encouraged me, over the years, to date their daughter, to include Esther and Floyd Newcomb, parents of Lynn Newcomb.

Albert Newman and his wife invited me to their home for dinner and encouraged me to date their daughter Elsa. Dr. and Mrs. Winfred Post also invited me to their home for dinner and for excursions with their daughter Eleanor, as did Betty Belle and Charles A. Blair, parents of Jean Gregg Blair, and Georgia and Bert Thomas, parents of Vicki and Dana Thomas.

I was cast in a showcase production of Epitaph for George Dillon with Elaine Frater, the wife of a prominent New York surgeon, while the two of us were taking classes at the American Academy of Dramatic Arts in 1964.

While visiting in New York and while living in New York I was a guest of my mom’s cousin, Helen Frampton Black Stegen, former daughter-in-law of banking and newspaper magnet Van-Lear Black and the mother of his son Van-Lear III. Helen, a native of St. Louis, was at the time the wife of public relations executive Edward F. Stegen.

While touring and performing with an acting group in Atlanta, I was a guest of Helen’s sister, Marjorie Doty Dobbs, divorced wife of Samuel Candler Dobbs Jr. and the mother of his three children, Warren, Candler Jr. and Marjorie Jr. (Jerri). While visiting in Washington, I was a houseguest of their sister, Clara Frampton Dobbs, wife of Pentagon vice president. Francis W. Crary. I was later a guest (1982) of Clara at her home in Boca Raton, following Frank’s death. All of them are now deceased.

Cousin Clara Crary is the last member of the family that I had any contact with, although I spoke to Helen’s son Van-Lear III and to his son Van-Lear IV on the phone a couple times.

My mom died in 1976 and my brother, who was a missing person for over 30 years, following three brain operations for a cholesteatoma, died in 2002, although I did not learn of his death until two years later. He was diagnosed with the cholesteatoma in 1966, when he was only 27 years old.

I myself have suffered from recurring earaches and inner ear infections since my early childhood, which quite possibly is the result of a cholesteatoma or at least a related condition. Cholesteatomas are viewed by the experts as having a probable congenital cause. They are most frequently exacerbated by being exposed to a variety of atmospheric chemicals, to include those found in contaminated swimming pool and lake waters.

The Turmoil Begins

I became a victim of military-induced aberrant psychological conditioning, beginning during the fall of 1953, my sophomore year at Joplin (Missouri) High School, while I was enrolled in the ROTC program. I was then 14 years old. The conditioning significantly undermined my self-confidence as a male and derailed my psychological development. Additional aberrant conditioning while serving in the Coast Guard between the years 1957 and 1960 – between the ages of 18 and 21 – produced a schizophrenic breakdown.

I never experienced auditory hallucinations, nor did I ever claim to have experienced auditory hallucinations – imaginary voices speaking to me. I was severely disturbed by real voices – disparaging voices – and by the unwelcome advances, sexual or otherwise, made to me by more aggressive males – most of them males that would categorically deny they had any homosexual inclinations.

I was also disturbed by the bizarre and confusing psychopathic behavior of aggressive females, who would flirt with me as a come on in an attempt exploit me, then later vulgarly berate me for my underlying naïveté and my gentlemanly qualities. In the process, they would attempt to drag me down to their own level of depravity, which is what aberrant psychological conditioning is all about.

Although I was given an honorable discharge for a diagnosed disabling mental condition, I was not awarded a service-connected disability pension, as examining psychiatrists attempted to whitewash the Coast Guard from culpability, placing the entire blame for my alleged condition on the examining psychiatrist’s opinion that I was reared by “an emotionally unstable mother.”

The psychiatric evaluation was an intended cover-up for the fact that I had been a victim – a repeated victim – of aberrant conditioning by the officers in charge and by my mentally conflicted shipmates.

I am a veteran of Army ROTC from age 14; a veteran of the United States Marine Corps Reserve from age 17; and a veteran of the United States Coast Guard from age 18. I was honorably discharged at age 21 after being observed while hospitalized in three different government operated psychiatric facilities and diagnosed as “autistic, paranoiac, schizophrenic, emotionally unstable, yet possessing an IQ in the superior range of development.”

I was a victim of ongoing deception from the day I was sworn into the Coast Guard. I was also a victim of one of the most reprehensible cover-ups in the history of the United States. Our government is corrupt. The United States Coast Guard is corrupt AND the medical profession is corrupt – at every level.

It was also noted that my behavior was NO fault of my own.

I was first hospitalized during the months of April and May of 1959 at a Baltimore marine hospital and at a Staten Island, N.Y. marine hospital as a result of my reaction to the extremely unpredictable and pathological behavior of my male shipmates, of officers in charge and of civilians.

A year later, during the months of April, May and June, I was rehospitalized at a New Orleans marine hospital for the same reasons that I was hospitalized in 1959.

Dr. Louis Finkelstein, who saw me on several occasions while I was hospitalized at the Staten Island facility, diagnosed me as having experienced an Adult Situational Response. In other words, my behavior was attributed to a relatively appropriate behavioral reaction to the extremely inappropriate behavior of significant others.

I was placed in a checkmate situation – a type of situation that would likely produce a mental breakdown for any normal adolescent male placed in such a situation as I was placed in.

On the day of my discharge from the hospital, June 3, 1960, I was asked to accompany a First Class Coast Guard Yeoman Petty Officer to a private room in the hospital, where he ordered me to sign my name to a lengthy typewritten statement, which he covered up with another piece of paper. When I hesitated, informing him that I wanted to read whatever it was I was signing my name to, he remarked in a very authoritative and intimidating manner, “You have no right to read what I am ordering you to sign your name to. I am ordering you to sign your name to this document.” I thus signed the document. It was a travesty of justice.

To this day, I do not know what I signed my name to. The fact is that my rights were violated, as I indeed did have a right to read the statement. I also had the right to refuse to sign the statement, if after reading it I felt my rights were being violated. At the time I was extremely vulnerable, as well as naïve. To repeat myself, I was in a checkmate situation.

Due to extraordinary circumstances, I found myself in a checkmate situation from the day I enlisted in the Coast Guard when I was an 18-year-old adolescent, after having completed two semesters of college as an honor student.

My goal, from an early age, was to become an architect.

I also enjoyed – from a young age – publishing my own mini newspapers or news bulletins with the printing press my mom and grandmom bought me. I was an inner directed, creative and industrious child.

My decision to enlist in the Marine Corps Reserve during my senior year of high school, then in the Coast Guard, after completing two semesters of college as an honor student, was an attempt to escape the domineering influence of my mother

Ironically, although my mother repeatedly urged me to go to Mexico and meet my father, after I did meet him during the summer of 1956, then returned home, she severely scolded me for sitting down at his dinner table. She soon after ordered me out of her home when she later discovered, under my desk blotter, a letter I was composing to him. She then remarked, “If that letter goes out of this house, you can go with it.” I didn’t mail it. However, I did leave, voluntarily, which is when I enlisted in the Coast Guard. I had no one on my ball team.

Ironically, both of my parents were, in a very real sense, my archenemies, from the onset of my life. My mom, however, was severely conflicted. She would alternately encourage me and discourage me. She would praise me, then humiliate me in front of others. She was both domineering and rejecting. Her moods were unpredictable. In a certain sense, she was jealous of me, as was my older brother, mainly because I received so many social invitations from my admirers early on in life. By the time I graduated from high school, however, I had few if any remaining close friends, primarily because my mom had (with her unpredictable behavior) gradually run everyone off. Mom could be extraordinarily gracious on one occasion, then be extraordinarily rude or abrasive on another occasion.

At the age of six months, I ran a fever of 106 degrees Fahrenheit, attributed to an inner ear infection. As a result, both of my eardrums were punctured by the attending physician. I was bothered by recurring earaches and inner ear infections throughout my childhood and adulthood.

I have had – throughout my adult life – a very noticeable startle reaction to noise off all kinds. Because loud noises actually hurt my eardrums, have used earplugs and even industrial-strength earmuffs from time to time to buffer sounds.

I am not only extremely sensitive to noise, but I am also extremely sensitive to chemicals of all kinds – to include caffeine, alcoholic beverages and psychotropic prescription drugs.

During my early childhood, from about age five, I was treated with gonadotropins for a partial cryptorchidism. I underwent a surgical procedure known as an orchipexy at the age of eight, during which time I was noted by the attending surgeon and nurses to have experienced a post-operative psychotic reaction to the anesthesia (ether) used during the surgical procedure.

My post operative psychotic reaction, the terrifying belief that nurses, physicians and other caretakers were trying to kill me, which intermittently resurfaced at bedtime for about three years thereafter was the direct result of brain damage caused by the anesthesia that was administered to me during surgery when I was eight yeas old.

Following my discharge in June 1960, I had recurring periods of amnesia During waking moments, I experienced an extreme startle reaction towards anyone who suddenly approached me.

What was bizarre is that when my godparents – Isabel Bankard Kinmonth Blakeney and her husband John S. Blakeney (a chemist for Phillips Petroleum Co.) – tried to get me treatment at the Veterans Hospital in Waco, where Isabel was volunteering as an aide, I was denied treatment.

Missouri psychiatrists diagnosed me with an anxiety disorder, as I was experiencing hypervigilance, recurring panic or startle reactions to sirens or similar noise and extreme fright reactions to anyone entering a room where I was sleeping. I would like be sleeping with one eye open.

There is no doubt that my anxiety reaction was due to the fact that I was a victim of so many assaults and battery by my shipmates, while serving my country, as well as by civilians.

The first assault, while serving in the Coast Guard, was by a shipmate, who threw me out of the hammock I was sleleping in on the aft deck of the ship, following a beer party hosted by the captain and other officers of the ship to which I was assigned.

Ironically, two of the civilians who assaulted me about the head were adult females – total strangers. Because I was a male, both females later tried to justify assaulting me by falsely claiming I had attacked them. They were treacherous liars – both of whom made their living by hustling or preying on naïve young men in uniform.

Veterans Administration physicians later diagnosed me with posttraumatic stress syndrome and as having a paranoid personality. Beverly Hills psychiatrist David A. Thiele, who saw me twice a month for three consecutive years diagnosed me with schizoaffective disorder in 1991.

I was, in 2001, diagnosed with posttraumatic stress disorder and bipolar disorder by Dr Edward A. Elliot, a graduate of Harvard Medical School, who did his residence at the Veterans Hospital in West Los Angeles, and who was also affiliated as a teacher at the UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute. Elliot viewed my behavior as hypomanic, rather than manic.

My depressed moods and hypomanic behavior – excessive talking to casual acquaintances or total strangers – pretty much coincide or overlap. My other most notable characteristic, as noted by psychiatrists connected with the VA is that when talking I am difficult to interrupt and that my thinking borders on flight of ideation. Because of my inner directedness and my tendency to dominate conversations with references to my horrendous past experiences, others have a tendency to walk away from me. Because I have experienced so much violent abuse by others, I tend to keep what I consider to be a safe distance from others and to avoid becoming too closely or intimately involved with anyone – male or female .

My sensitivity made it impossible to sustain close relationships with anyone – either in a workplace situation or in a marriage. Both of my marriages ended as a result of my past history as a victim of violence

and the increased difficulty I had in focusing on goals.

Even today, at age 73+, I am extremely hypervigilant, no doubt as a result of having been a past victim of so much violence – attempts by others to abduct me and anesthetize me (by spiking a drink) for the purpose of placing me in a coma in order to rob me or commit a sexual assault on my body. One such abductor claimed to be the son of a former Los Angeles police officer.

When I was younger I was twice abducted while visiting in Mexico. The first time by a young German-Mexican psychoanalyst and concert pianist, who resided in a three-story Paseo de la Reforma mansion owned by his German-Mexican industrialist father. He approached me while I was having a sandwich at Sanborns. The second time, I was abducted by a Mexican tour guide in Tijuana, shortly after I published my Investor’s Handbook on Mexico. That abduction resulted in an international investigation of my complaints, at which time the vice president of the Mexican Tourism Department, California Gov. Ronald Reagan and the American Consul in Tijuana joined hands to assist me and other Americans who had met with a similar fate while visiting in Mexico.

I prefer to spend most of my time alone, reading, drawing, writing and reediting my published manuscripts. I have written approximately 20 book-length manuscripts, most dealing with psychiatry and the criminal justice system and how both might best be improved for the benefit of the patients and of society.

I explained to each of my examiners the fact that I was a repeated victim of the criminal and inappropriate behavior of others, including by my former employers – both corporate and governmental employers. I had also been a victim of the crime of false arrest and false imprisonment on several occasions. In each instance, my reaction was a very normal reaction to others, both male and female, who had violated me, to include so-called peace officers themselves – lying, violent criminal psychopaths wearing badges.

Apparently as a result of rumors circulated by individuals knowledgeable of my medical history, I experienced taunting by elementary and high school classmates, and then later by Coast Guard shipmates who had been apprised of my medical history by Coast Guard records keepers.

The ongoing taunting resulted in suppressed anger, self-consciousness and increased difficulty in focusing on my work assignments and my goals in life.

I received a letter of commendation from President Dwight D. Eisenhower for my search and rescue work in the South Pacific during my first year of service.

I graduated with honors from the Groton, Connecticut Radioman Training School in March 1959, two months prior to my first hospitalization for observation, following a head injury I received by a mentally disturbed and drunken stranger – a total stranger.

I myself was a Third Class Petty Officer, who had already been recommended for promotion to Second Class Petty Officer at the time I was hospitalized for the second time for psychiatric observation, then honorably discharged – with the accompanying stigma of a totally inappropriate psychiatric diagnosis – a legalized form of character assassination – that would only further undermine chances for ever again being treated as a first class citizen.

My behavior and the behavior of my shipmates, to include officers and non-officers, who violated me was behavior that was encouraged and reinforced by the Coast Guard officers in charge, who provided Coast Guard personnel with alcoholic beverages aboard ship while we were anchored offshore in the South Pacific, and who encouraged off-duty socialization at on-base clubs and beer gardens and at off base saloons and cocktail lounges.

Following my discharge, I experienced ongoing humiliation by civilian co-workers – who had been apprised of my medical history – and by other civilians – making it increasingly difficult for me to focus on my work assignments and on career goals.

NOTE: Prior to active duty with the Coast Guard, I served for six years as an officer, to include that of president, of the Young Peoples Service League at St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in southwest Missouri. I was appointed citizenship chairman and president of a Southwest Missouri inter-racial, interdenominational protestant youth organization, for which I received statewide recognition as a result of my ‘outstanding’ leadership skills. I was also chosen by my high school teachers and by the Rotary Club to be a delegate to Missouri Boys State during the summer of 1955, whence (at the age of 16) I passed the Missouri Boys State Bar exam, scoring 98% correct answers out of a possible 100.

Following graduation from Joplin High School and prior to entering the Coast Guard, I attended the National University of Mexico in Mexico City, when I met my natural father, a Mexico City engineer and executive, who had abandoned my mom, my older brother and me at the time of my own birth in 1938 or shortly thereafter, a meeting that was not particularly pleasant for me.

My father’s common-law wife, an alumna of USC in Los Angeles, who had been residing with him since soon after he abandoned us, was scathingly vulgar in her demeanor towards me and in her remarks of reference to my mom and my older brother, neither of whom she had ever met, yet remarks intended to infuriate and confuse me – although I did not responded in any way to her calloused remarks.

I then continued my education at a community college in Joplin, Missouri. I was an honor student at both institutions.

However, as a result of ongoing conflict with my emotionally distraught and emotionally detached mother and my rejecting, emotionally detached father and stepfather (who committed suicide when I was 16 years old and a junior in high school), I enlisted in the Coast Guard at the age of 18.

I resultantly found myself in a checkmate situation – with no one on my ball team – I was caught between a rock and a hard place, as it were.

My father and paternal grandfather had been engaged in the oil and mining business in Mexico and in the USA for many years. They founded and were operating El Cedro Silver Mining Co. in Guanajuato, Mexico at the time of my birth.

My paternal grandfather was also president of the Farmers National Bank of Tulsa. One of his uncles was a Supreme Court Justice of Oklahoma Territory and later served as chief counsel for the Federal Trade Commission, as well as of the U. S. Department of Agriculture. Another uncle was a U. S. congressman. A third uncle was a professor of medical jurisprudence at St. Louis College of Physicians & Surgeons, which later became a part of Washington University.

My maternal grandfather, by the way, was a co-founder of a Midwest plow factory and of a pioneer interstate bus line that served the residents of Southwest Missouri, Southeast Kansas and Northwest Arkansas. He died seven year prior to my own birth.

In March 1938, The Mexican government, then under the fascist leadership of President Lázaro Cárdenas, seized the assets of 17 legally based, yet American, British, and Dutch owned and managed oil companies operating in Mexico. The Mexican government then proceeded to sell its oil to Nazi Germany at the beginning of World War II. Thus, Mexico in part fueled World War II

During the 1938 Cardenas revolution, in which the Mexican government seized (stole) the assets of foreign petroleum companies, the Mexican government also authorized a lengthy and crippling strike against American operated mining companies, resulting of the liquidation of the newly formed El Cedro in late 1938.

Incidentally, President Cardenas welcomed my family to Mexico, enabled them to obtain inmigrado (permanent residency) papers, and encouraged them to invest their money, time and mining engineering skills in the company, which also traded with established Mexican mining supply companies. Cardenas then suddenly executed an about face.

During the strike, my mom was, for her own safety, evacuated from Guanajuato, while still pregnant with me and while carrying in her arms my older brother, not yet one-year-old, who was born in Mexico in 1937.

My father soon after deserted my mom, my brother and me, later forming a common-law marriage with another woman, Alice LeRoi Jordan Oswald, a divorcee and alumnus of USC and native of Glendale, California, after which my father and Alice apparently returned to Mexico, where my father continued to work as a mining engineer for other Latin American based mining companies – in both Mexico and Bolivia – yet he failed to support his two children (my brother and me) and his wife (my mom) whom he had married in Missouri in 1934.

Interestingly, my father continued to list my mom, Clara Olive, as his wife on government documents, as ascertained by the Department of State and the FBI, even though he was not supporting her and my older brother and me, the two sons he sired by her.

My father furthermore conveyed to officials of the Department of State, that he and Alice LeRoi Jordan had never married, although she did reside with him – off and on – throughout the years and he did support Alice and her son, Stephen (born in Chula Visa, California on December 24, 1940), following his abandonment of my mom (Clara Olive) and my older brother and me, while residing in Mexico.

NOTE: I later edited and published (1970) The Investor’s Handbook on Mexico – a guide for foreigners desiring to study in Mexico, to reside in Mexico, or to invest in the Mexican economy. My publication was endorsed by the Mexican Tourism Department. At the time, my wife was head catalog librarian of the Bio-Medical Library of UCSD at La Jolla, California. She was also a consultant for Psychology Today magazine.

I was thus born in Missouri in November 1938 and reared (along with my older brother) in my maternal grandmother’s home, while my mom went to work at unlivable wages, first as a clerk at an Army base, then as a pass inspector in a munitions factory (Spencer Chemical Co.), then as a PBX board operator for the electric power company, then as a physician’s assistant, then as an on-the-road director of fund-raising musical events for a variety of American charity and civic organizations, to include a variety of women’s clubs, the American Legion, the Lions Clubs of America and the Jaycees.

During my early years, my absent father and my absent paternal grandparents, virtual millionaires, neglected and crucified me merely for being my mom’s son.

I thus became my own father’s and paternal grandparents’ scapegoat, as did my older brother.

I also became a scapegoat for my emotionally detached stepfather, who married my mom when I was 11 years old and committed suicide when I was 16.

Our mom’s domineering attitude, emotional instability, and at times emotional unavailability exacerbated the situation, setting the stage for our somewhat autistic adult behavior – a preoccupation with our somewhat poorly-defined identity and a reluctance to become closely involved with others – both males and females.”

During my first year of service with the Coast Guard, I was assaulted and battered by a drunk and hostile black (African-American) shipmate who threw me out of the hammock I was sleeping in onto the deck, then pounced on me, sitting on to of me while I was lying on my back, banging the back of my head against the deck and attempting to strangle me.

My assailant was drunk as a direct result of the fact that the captain of the ship to which we were assigned had hosted a beer party at the end of a workday while the ship was anchored offshore in the South Pacific, a party It did not participate in.

While my shipmates were partying on the buoy deck of the Cutter Planetree, I was cleaning up the mess deck and washing the dishes for the meal I had served to my shipmates, including to the individual that later assaulted me.

My assailant also had repeatedly mocked me for the fact that I “had been to college” and preferred reading, attending Episcopal Church social function or surfing in the ocean – while off duty – to drinking beer with my shipmates at taverns. I never responded either vocally or otherwise to my assailant’s annoying and inappropriate comments or remarks.

Officers and non-officers (seamen) attached to the Cutter Planetree, became increasingly aware that, while off duty, I tended to socialize with well-connected people who were, for the most part close friends of the family, people I had grown up with who were then residing in Honolulu or Japan – to include the Aitons, who owned the Honolulu Rattan Furniture Factory, Betsy Balsley, who was then working for a Honolulu bank and later was food editor for the Honolulu Advertiser and for the Los Angeles Times. I also briefly socialized with Gretchen Spooner, whom I had dated while growing up in Joplin and who was then a student at University of Hawaii. While my ship was docked in Japan, I received an invitation for dinner at the Yokohama home of Army General Ray Cochran and his wife and their son and daughter. My mom had grown up with Ray and his wife. Ray’s father, Ray Sr., was general manager of the Joplin Globe.

I was then 19 years old. To repeat myself: I had not said one word to Seaman Reed (who was older, surly, more aggressive and much heavier than I) either before or after the assault, although I had witnessed Reed – during the work day – threatening and intimidating other shipmates with the remark “I’ll hit you up the side of the head.”

Yet adjudicating officers (all of whom witnessed the assault and battery, while Seaman Reed was sitting on top of me, while I was lying on my back prostrate on the deck and attempting to strangle me after first pounding the back of my head against the deck) afterwards punished me right along with Seaman Lester Reed, as if I had willfully participated with Seaman Reed in a scuffle, when in fact I was very clearly a passive victim of an atrocious assault and battery.

The fact is that the officers in charge, who hosted the beer party with taxpayers’ money – a party that I did NOT participate in – were in part responsible for provoking the assault – by providing Seaman Reed with intoxicants that unleashed his pent-up hostility onto an innocent and defenseless victim –while I was napping in a hammock on the aft deck of the ship.

I repeat: While my shipmates were partying – drinking beer – on the buoy deck – I was cleaning up the dining area and washing my shipmate’s dishes, after having served their dinner to them as their waiter. After I completed my assigned duties, I then reclined to a hammock on the fantail deck of the ship – at the other end of the Cutter Planetree.

I was in fact a victim of an assault and battery, as well as a victim of a gross miscarriage of justice by the adjudicating officers in charge. I am still seeking compensatory and punitive damages from the U. S. government, although I now feel certain the U. S. government would prefer to see me dead than to pay me compensation for my suffering.

view I Was A Leader During High School view

Once again, I had been a community inter-racial civil rights leader during my high school days, serving as president of an inter-racial, inter-faith youth organization from the age of 16, an organization comprised of people of color AND white people. I hosted the first-of-it-kind inter-racial, inter-faith gathering at First Presbyterian Church in Joplin, Missouri in February 1955.

I also served as vice president and president of the Young Peoples Service League of St. Philip’s Episcopal Church in Joplin. My colleagues and I [during the spring of 1956] nominated and unanimously elected Carol Young to be the first African-American president of the Diocesan Youth Commission of the West Missouri Diocese of the Episcopal Church.

My own government betrayed me during my teenage years and my government has continued to betray me throughout the years by covering up the fact that I was a VICTIM of aberrant psychological conditioning by the military brass in charge – to include officers and examining physicians.

The Veterans Administration has continued to harm me by failing to award me just compensation – an amount I have determined to be a minimum of $50 million – for character assassination and ongoing neglect during the time I was honorably serving my country and throughout my adult life – which has been a living hell.

I was a victim of ongoing and intolerable sexual harassment (to include sexual assault) by other shipmates, to include by my male supervisor – aboard ship and while ashore – resulting in my being hospitalized on several occasions for psychiatric observation.

Because I confidentially complained about the harassment to examining psychiatrists and because my medical records were not kept confidential by records personnel, I became a victim of even more taunting – traumatizing taunting – by shipmates after being returned to duty.

My psychiatric evaluation records were not kept confidential, but were (as I later learned) broadcast to the other crewmembers – officers and seamen – prior to my returning to duty. For one thing, psychiatrists did not accurately report on their written records what I conveyed to them. They, the two shrinks that examined me at Baltimore, deliberately prepared a highly damaging portrait and deliberately taking out of context my own words, and deliberately omitting very significant factual material regarding the reason for my being placed under psychiatric observation.

The omissions were designed to protect Coast Guard authorities, those in charge of me, from blame for my reactive behavior.

I was a victim, a repeated victim of assaults and battery, not only by shipmates, but also by civilian female hustlers, as well as by shore patrol officers – officers I had summoned for help after having been victimized by female hustlers – hustlers that were known to prey on naïve and youthful Armed Services enlisted men.

In fact, I was bludgeoned over the head with a beer bottle by a total stranger – an intoxicated female – who broke a beer bottle over my forehead merely because I had repeatedly asked to stay away from me after she had attempted to solicit me for drinks and for a lewd act with her male civilian companion in a public restroom in a Washington D. C. club.

Because I explained to the woman that I was not interested in engaging in sex with her male companion and therefore very appropriately got up and left the club, she followed after me to a different club across the street, then loudly berated me with vulgar, emasculating expletives. When I once again asked her to stay away from me, she approached me a third time for the purpose of breaking her beer bottle over my forehead. She split my head open.

At the time, I was standing, conversing with three uniformed Navy men

There would be no doubt to even the most casual of observers that the woman was psychotically disturbed and that I was merely a convenient scapegoat. I myself was also in uniform at the time of the incident and was in Washington D. C. for the sole purpose of visiting and having dinner with my cousin Clara and her husband later on in the day. My cousin’s husband, Francis W. Crary, was then vice president of the transportation division of the Pentagon.

The head wound required surgical repair at a Washington, D. C. Navy infirmary during the spring of 1959. The female assailant was not apprehended by the police, although she was present when the shore patrol arrived and in an obvious state of drunkenness.

Two weeks later I was hospitalized for psychiatric observation at a Baltimore marine hospital, then at a Staten Island, N. Y. marine hospital.

During my sophomore year in high school, I was a victim of ongoing psychological terror by classmates primarily because I honestly reported to an inspecting ROTC officer that the reason I was “out of uniform” was that a senior cadet and varsity athlete had demanded I hand him my uniform cap for his own use only minutes prior to a weekly inspection during the fall of 1953.

Angry for having been cited by the inspecting officer for having taking my uniform cap for his own use, Don Smith, several days later psychologically terrorized me, while I was in formation at the beginning of a Veteran’s Day parade by (with his fists clenched in a fight position) repeatedly screaming vulgar expletives in reference to my mother, and then calling me” yellow” for refusing to swing back at Smith.

Don Smith thence persuaded other cadets to verbally taunt and assault and batter me in the school hallways and after school, when I became the victim of a premeditated abduction, assault and battery to the face as I opened the front door of my own home – 816 Richmond Road -- in early 1954.

Previous to the ROTC incident and the subsequent abduction and battery of me in the doorway of my home, I had been subjected to a variety of other forms of treachery, to include repeated sexual battery by my abductors, as well as experiencing their ongoing attempts to soil the reputation of girls I was dating.

One of my teen assailants is today a retired Navy pilot, Captain Joseph Robert Thornhill. Another one of my his teen assailants was Jimmy Dailey, all-star St. Louis University basketball champ, who, after serving as a commissioned Army officer, spent the remainder of his own adult years as an account rep for Arthur Andersen Company. Another was Buck Jeans, a/k/a Virgil E. Jeans Jr., and son of a World War II Army surgeon.

Buck Jeans very aggressively attempted to engage me in a demoralizing homosexual act in the yard of my mom’s attorney Roy Coyne, who lived across the street from us. I do believe that it was because I did NOT respond to Jeans’ attempt to violate me and to thereby assail my manhood that he felt compelled to try to psychologically destroy me in other ways, as did his closest allies and companions, to include Bob Thornhill.

Frank H. Shelton, the stepfather of another neighbor of mine coached his stepson Charles Walton Keeter to batter me with a baseball bat merely because, during an organized neighborhood wrestling match in which I was reluctant to participate from the onset, I, in accordance with the fair rules of wrestling, nevertheless pinned my opponent Keeter’s shoulders to the ground in an extremely non-violent manner, thus fairly winning the match.

However, prior to attempting to batter me with his baseball bat with his stepfather’s encouragement, Sore Loser Keeter repeatedly dug his fingernails into my chest, drawing blood and simultaneously ripped my shirt (which was actually a dress shirt) to shreds prior to running into his house and returning with his baseball bat and his stepfather and coach Frank Shelton, then assistant to the president of the power company.

View picture of Frank Shelton and his wife Louise at a garden party my mom and stepdad hosted at our home for Empire employees in 1950. Frank’s daughter by a previous marriage taught my brother and me how to swim when we were five years old. I had dated Charles Keeter’s sister, Susan, with whom I had a brief summer romance, prior to the melee.

The assaults had a direct bearing on the breakup of my parents’ marriage and my stepdad’s resignation as treasurer of the power company, under extreme duress, and his suicide a year later – at the end of my junior year in high school.

No Remorse

Although my parents and I did not file charges against my assailants, not one of them ever express remorse, nor did their parents express any form of apology or offer any form of restitution for the physical and mental battery their sons inflicted on me and on other members of my family. The Jeans, Thornhills, Daileys and Sheltons were no doubt well aware that by not acknowledging their wrongdoing they were merely exacerbating my own inner turmoil, indeed sufficient to produced a very gradual schizophrenic breakdown.

Although Jeans and Thornhill were arrested by local police two years later (in 1956) for stealing hubcaps from other neighbors following their graduation from Western Military Academy, they still never owned up to the truth of what they did to me during my sophomore year of high school. To a certain extent, I was a victim of murder, which is what happens to any young person that has been a victim of ongoing molestation of various sorts and of gang violence and character assassination.

Following military service, with the stigma of a psychiatric discharge hanging over my head, I drifted about the country working at a variety of low-paid jobs in Miami, Florida and elsewhere – to include that of a copy boy for the Miami Herald – where I was terminated for reacting to incessant harassment by a jealous supervisor – as a result of rumors circulating about my psychiatric history.

I was also terminated as a passenger agent by the Atlantic Coast Line railroad for lodging justifiable complaints of continuous sexual harassment of me by two male supervisors.

During my employment with ACL, I dated the Dade County sheriff’s daughter, whom I met in a water safety instructor’s class; a physician’s daughter and a Miami Police officer’s daughter, both of whom I met at an Episcopal Church young adult group, of which I was vice president; and an IBM executive’s daughter, Cheri, whom I met in an actors workshop (operated by TV producer Ruth Gould Foreman) and whom I married three months later. Ruth, by the way, hosted a reception for the two of us, following our wedding.

Cheri, by the way, informed me shortly after we tied the knot, that she had been a psychiatric patient while a college sophomore as a result of suicidal ideation. She said she felt very awkward because she was so tall, although she was three inches shorter than I. She also revealed to me that she was a chronic bed wetter, that she did not enjoy being kissed – that she considered kissing unsanitary. She had a very apparent aversion to very normal love making, to expressing affection or to being the recipient of affection. She did not show any appreciation for any gift I bought her.

Also, Cheri did not like the the car I drove (a 1963 Renault).

Although I took Cheri to Palm Beach to meet my mom’s cousin, Grace Johnson Davis, whose father, brothers and husband founded Borg-Warner Corporation, Cheri’s paternal grandmother referred to me as “not a very big fish” and remarked to Cheri in my presence, Better throw him back.

The individual whom I selected to be best man at our wedding had been a World War II Navy commander.His own father was a New York surgeon.

Cheri was also blatantly rude to me and disrespectful of me – in front of company. Most of our guests were people from the local Episcopal Church, where I had served as vice president of a singles group prior to our marriage. Cheri’s mother’s family were Pentecostal, her father’s family Methodist. Her mother and father were nominal members of the Congregational Church.

Following our divorce, Cheri launched a career as a flight attendant. She retired as a flight attendant supervisor for a major airline, then converted to Roman Catholicism and became a nun and free-lance journalist and photographer for an on-line news magazine.

Two years after our divorce, she wrote me and asked me to meet her for a rendezvous in Kansas City – one of her stopover points. The airline she worked for had put her through a charm and grooming school. The exterior was very appealing. However, the personality was, of course, the same. It’s probably best that we never saw each other again.

During Cheri’s and my separation, that began two months following our January 1964 wedding when Cheri moved back home with her parents, I worked as a $1.25 per hour truck driver for Shaw’s Landscape Nursery, delivering sod, fertilizer and gravel.

Following our divorce, arranged by Cheri’s father, who repeatedly offended me with his left-handed remarks from the onset of our relationship, I relocated to New York City, where I worked for the Associated Press for about a year and became affiliated with several acting and playwriting groups, to include the Berghoff Studio and the American Academy of Dramatic Arts.

I voluntarily left my job at the Associated Press as a result of ongoing annoying and offensive verbal and physical sexual harassment by swish co-worker Clark Perry. while I was performing my assigned duties. Although Perry was immediately transferred to a different department at AP, following my complaint of his harassment, he immediately posted an announcement of his engagement, to a female employed as a manager at Macy’s, on an AP bulletin board. Soon after, Perry, a once aspiring opera singer, sang an aria at the wedding of another AP employee, Avery Faulkner, who was then working on a master’s in art at Columbia University.

Following my departure from Associated Press, I went on the road with a theatrical group, International Dinner Theaters, an East Coast touring group, operated by producer Howard DeWulf. I voluntarily left the tour in Atlanta as a result of having been annoyed, in the same manner that Clark Perry had annoyed me while I was working for the Associated Press, by a co-producer, a Mr. Barton, the father of Jan Barton, an adult female divorcee (previously married to a physician) whom I was at the time dating.

In 1966 I enrolled in the College of Fine Arts at the University of Oklahoma with the intention of getting a degree in drama education, However, I quickly became an outsider within the drama department as a result of my very appropriate, outspoken defense of a female classmate, Susan Pace, who had been cruelly defamed by a punk assistant male professor with vulgar expletives at an off-campus party, to which I was invited by Miss Pace.

I thus pursued liberal arts studies in the College of Arts and Science and in the Graduate College of University of Oklahoma (majoring in political science, sociology and city planning).

However, I quickly became alienated and embittered with the volatile political climate that existed on campus – a climate largely enabled by Dr. George Henderson, a black militant sociology professor who terrorized white civil rights leaders during a MLK memorial service, falsely blaming them (us) for King’s assassination.

I was also a victim of Dr. John Paul Duncan, an unscrupulous political science professor, who persecuted and penalized me by lowering my grade on a History of Political Theory exam merely because I publicly revealed a red-lining plot sanctioned by Duncan for the purpose of denying membership in the Young Democrats Club (of which I was a member) to any male sporting a beard.

I was also penalized in a variety of ways for merely for speaking out about the politically volatile situation that indeed existed on campus – a situation enabled by Dr. George Henderson, Dr. John Paul Duncan, President George Cross, Cross’s successor Dr. John Herbert Holloman, and by the Oklahoma Board of Regents, who sanctioned an unfair grading policy that automatically discriminated against American students by awarding foreign students a grade higher than they actually earned.

The faculty and administrators of University of Oklahoma were, for the most part, comprised of a group of uncouth, upwardly mobile, warmongering addicts of various sorts., as were certain individuals I encountered as a member- of the Canterbury Dinner Club of St. John’s Episcopal Church, where I met my second wife Sue Ann.

One of Sue Ann’s closest friends was the daughter of the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Diocese of Oklahoma, who was married to a clergyman.

Because I was cheated out of a quality education at America’s state supported institutions of so-called higher education, I later founded the Shepherd-Montessori Institute and awarded myself an honorary Ph. D. in education – as a result of my own investigations and research. I am, of course, the author of many well-researched, well-documented manuscripts, to include this one.

I might stress – once again – that I early on in life became blatantly aware of the unfair grading system that existed at every American state supported institution of higher education that I attended. I also became blatantly aware – as has everyone else – of the number of high ranking criminal psychopaths – many of them congresspersons statespersons – who have been awarded honorary doctorates at various institutions of so-called higher learning. It’s all political.

I always wrote my own term papers. However, I became increasingly bitter when classmates confessed to me that they did not write their own term papers, but paid others to write their term papers for them. It was especially annoying to see those same persons graduating with honors.

In 1967, I met Sue Ann Johnson Moritz at the Canterbury Club in Norman. Sue Ann was five years older than I and was at the time a graduate student in library science. Her bachelor degrees were in medical science, anthropology, English and library science. She was also the recipient of a mathematics award.

Following our graduation, Sue Ann and I moved to Del Mar, California, where I established a publishing business and furniture building and home furnishings marketing business, Thomas of La Jolla, a logo Sue Ann herself suggested I use as a trade name. For her, I myself was Thomas of La Jolla.

I authored The Investor’s Handbook on Mexico and continued writing short stories. One of the classes I enrolled in at University of Oklahoma was a fiction writing class taught by William Foster-Harris.

Meanwhile, my wife worked as head catalog librarian for the Biomedical Library at UCSD in La Jolla and as a consultant to the editors of Psychology Today magazine. She also gave lecture on library science at various institutions of higher education – in Oklahoma and California. Interestingly, she asked me to write her speeches or lectures for her.

After three years of marriage, Sue Ann and I divorced. Just prior to the divorce, Sue Ann dealt the final blow by bludgeoning me over the head from behind while I was seated at our dining table conversing with relatives over the telephone.

Months before, Sue Ann had set the footwork by writing an eight-page scathingly cruel poison pen letter to my mom, saying over and over I don’t know why Tom even gives you and his brother the time of day and butt out of our lives – a letter my mom merely mailed to me so I could read it for myself.

Ironically, my mom had very little to do with Sue’s and my life, other than that she had given life to me from the onset. She was anything but meddlesome. We rarely saw her. Sue Ann was merely projecting the underlying deep-seated hostility she harbored for her own mother onto my mom.

Ironically, Sue Ann became increasingly angry with me – psychotically angry – merely because her own mother, Latvia Johnson Moritz, was so appreciative of my gentlemanly qualities, of my devotion to Sue Ann and of my endeavors as a publisher, furniture builder and retailer that she offered to back me in my business (jointly owned by Sue Ann and me) to the tune of $30,000.00. There is no doubt that Sue Ann was jealous of her own mother and the fact that her mother, as well as very member of her mom’s family, also adored me – because I was a gentleman and so considerate of all of them.

Sue Ann also became angry with me merely because I showed very normal concern for the welfare of my own mother, a semi-invalid as a result of many years of suffering from osteoarthritis (who had given Sue a diamond ring, a family heirloom) and for my older brother (who was suffering from a seizure disorder and other complications following brain surgery for a cholesteatoma).

Sue Ann took everything out of context and in the end made every effort to destroy me – the wind beneath her own wings.

Ironically, it seems that Sue Ann was insanely jealous of anyone that took a liking to me, her own husband, or to whom I demonstrated genuine concern for. She also did not seem to value my own basic Christian values – values that neither she nor the Episcopal clergy at the parishes we affiliated with seemed to value. In fact, I was chased out of the church merely because I held fast to my most basic Christian values – values that were not honored by either Sue Ann or the Episcopal Church clergy.

Prior to our divorce, Sue Ann revealed to me that she, years before, had been treated for a psychiatric disorder while she was working as a nurse at the Touro Clinic in New Orleans. She also revealed that she had felt abandoned by her own mother, who left her with an aunt and uncle while she was still a child. Plus, she said she believed her mother to be involved in some sort of underworld organized crime and that her wealth was primarily the result of such activity.

Ironically, Sue Ann became the ultimate beneficiary of her mother’s wealth, most of which came from a long-standing extramarital relationship she nurtured with a married Roman Catholic physician – who – Sue Ann herself informed me – transferred a great deal of real estate and personal property jointly owned by him and his Church-sanctioned wife into Lavita’s name prior to his death.

Sue Ann’s mother also worked for a few years as a paralegal to one of Oklahoma City’s most prestigious probate lawyers, prior to her own premature retirement at a very young age. Lavita was a remarkably intelligent, mentally well-balanced and attractive woman. She adored me, primarily for the fact that Sue Ann had, to use Lavita’s own words, blossomed into a woman – and a very happy woman soon after marrying me. Lavita did everything possible to make our marriage work. She paid cash for her new cars, to include one she gave to us soon after our marriage. She gave me money for our honeymoon and to take Sue Ann on other excursions. For Lavita, money was no object.

The problem is that Sue Ann couldn’t see the forest for the trees. Ironically, Sue Ann’s anger stemmed from her own expressed feelings – that her mother had been extremely stingy towards her during her childhood and even adult years UNTIL she married me. In Sue Ann’s warped way of thinking, her mother preferred me to Sue Ann, when the fact is that the three of us were a team – a family. However, Sue Ann was, in my opinion, feeling extremely embarrassed and ashamed of her mother’s long-standing extramarital relationship – a relationship that was common knowledge to Sue Ann’s own inner circle of friends – virtually all of whom were either the wives of physicians or the wives of Christian ministers.

While Sue Ann and I were dinner guests at the Oklahoma City home of friends of hers, a physician and his wife, the physician, who was somewhat inebriated, jokingly made reference to Sue Ann’s mom’s numerous involvements over the years with married physicians. I felt certain at the time that the remark was made to intentionally humiliate Sue Ann, for what reason I do not know. Sue Ann was known to, on occasion, make rather stinging remarks herself in an attempt to make others feel uncomfortable.

As I mentioned, Sue Ann and I met at the Episcopal Church Canterbury Club while the two of us were students at University of Oklahoma. Sue Ann was then working part time as a psychiatric nurse at the Oklahoma State Hospital in Norman.

Following our exchange of marriage vows and her graduation from the Graduate College with a master’s degree in library science, Sue Ann worked as a library consultant for the Oklahoma Department of Libraries, setting up and managing patient libraries in Oklahoma mental hospitals and in schools for the deaf and blind. After we moved to Del Mar, California, Sue Ann was hired as head catalog librarian for the Bio-Medical Library of UCSD in La Jolla. She later was appointed head library of the UCSD Medical School Library.

Power Politics

Following the 1971 divorce, I was briefly retained as an urban planning consultant and assistant planning director for Ozark Gateway Regional Planning Commission & Law Enforcement Assistance Council in Missouri. I was inappropriately terminated – after five months – merely for responding in a very appropriate manner to ongoing vulgar harassment and battery of me by co-employees, including by the female office bookkeeper (Judy Tedder), by the female office secretary (Virginia Anderson), by the planning director (Dr. Mary Megee) and by executive director Jack L. Williams, who initiated and encouraged the harassment from the onset.

The fact is that Dr. Megee and Virginia Anderson had been involved in a back-biting war from the onset and I got caught in the cross fire, merely for attempting to very diplomatically carry out my assigned duties and responsibilities as a consultant and assistant planning director.

Because Mary and I also attended conferences together and had lunch together frequently, Virginia became obsessively jealous of our professional relationship, nebulous as it was.

Mary incidentally had asked me, confidentially, if I would be interested in forming a separate partnership with her – that we become a planning consulting team, an arrangement I told her I would think about. She also expressed an interest in placing an ad in the second edition of The Investor’s Handbook on Mexico, which I had first published the year before, as she was interested in soliciting clients for feasibility studies for economic development in Latin America. We did have a lot of common-ground interests.

Mary also invited me to accompany her to a Kansas State University lecture featuring a highly controversial attorney – William Kuntsler – the civil rights attorney that defended the notorious Chicago Seven and other radicals.

The problem was that both Mary and I were both somewhat dominant personalities, although I was far more laid back than Mary, who was at times infuriatingly domineering and off center – to a fault – as I eventually learned the hard way. She was disturbingly paranoiac. She, in the end, falsely accused me of having spread false rumors about her in the office when the fact is that it was Virginia Anderson that was spreading the rumors – not just about Mary, but about the two of us. After I left the Commission, Dr. Megee and I kept in touch.

Although Mary never owned up to the fact that her own totally off-the-wall paranoiac and outrageous behavior towards me is what motivated out-of-control, raging Jack Williams to lose his own cool and fire me, she later bragged about getting Judy Tedder, the bookkeeper, fired for allegedly calling her a PIG in the office.

Mary Megee still later expressed to me her indignation that Tedder was soon after hired as director of the area Civil Defense Agency. Judy’s aunt, Mary confided in me, was secretary to the Joplin City Manager, whose office was in the same building, at the time.

Jack Wiilliams, although executive director of the Planning Commission was too afraid of Anderson and Megee to be effective as an executive director. He got rid of me, then Judy, merely because of his fear of what Anderson and Megee might politically do to him if he sided with me, even though he and everyone else connected with Ozark Gateway knew that I was not the problem – that my own conduct was appropriate and above board. As everyone became increasingly aware, I had no one on my own ball team.

I shall say it again, because it bears repeating. I had no one on my own ball team.

I was and still am a gentleman, reacting as well as any man could be expected to react to the ongoing daily mockery, insults and vulgarities I was subjected to by all three of the females working in the Ozark Gateway Regional Planning Commission office, as well as by two males working in the office, one of them was a clerk, the other was Jack Williams, the executive director in charge.

As I said, I got caught in the crossfire – an ongoing feud repeatedly fueled and refueled by male jealousy and feminine jealousy. I was the only single, available and somewhat eligible male in the office. I was not interested in becoming intimately involved with any of the individuals I was working with. Although I tried to be as diplomatic as possible, the only individual in the office that was respectful towards me was Roy Black, the Law Enforcement Assistance Council liaison affiliated with our office.

During the five months I was employed at Ozark Gateway, I edited a monthly newsletter and edited the annual Planning Commission report – a 150-page document. I also prepared maps and charts contained in the report. Sen. Richard M. Webster, who helped establish the Commission later wrote a letter in my behalf, as did Dr. Mary Megee, both highly praising me for my performance, although it was Dr. Megee that indirectly got me fired.

Dr. Megee was highly paranoiac from the onset. She was hired one month after I was hired. Although I was as supportive of her as possible, she nevertheless was condescendingly rude and abrasive in her manner to everyone at the Commission – with the exception of Jack, whom she appropriately patronized since he was in charge of the hiring and firing. Dr. Megee was admittedly taking amphetamines for the purpose of controlling her weight.

Mary’s family owned two drug stores in Joplin, one called Megee’s Drug Store, owned by her mother, the other called McCool’s Drug Store, owned and operated by her aunt, Elsie McCool for many, many years.

A lot of people that insulted and maligned me, I conjectured, were males and females that were insanely jealous of me. Others apparently felt scorned merely because I did not respond to their flirtations or brazen attempts to excite me. I was a victim of a lot of frotteurism in the workplace – initiated by both males and females.

However, I was repeatedly humiliated and discredited as a result of twisted rumors being circulated by Williams, Anderson and Tedder regarding my medical history. The ongoing harassment was for the purpose of intimidating and discrediting me for merely appropriately carrying out assigned duties as a planning consultant and planner and for defending Dr. Mary Megee. I was NEVER compensated for my unfair termination.

I soon after returned to California and rented an apartment next door to the Actors Studio, where I was engaged in some behind-the-scenes work on a Lonny Chapman play, Hootsudie, starring Lou Antonio and Jim Antonio, which closed soon after opening.

Lonny Chapman, incidentally, was also a native of Joplin, as was his best friend of many years Dennis Weaver. Weaver’s stepdad and my stepdad were employed by the same power company.

Meanwhile, I went about the job of trying to locate another position in urban planning. I applied for a position as assistant planning director for the City of Beverly Hills. The planning director interviewed me, told me he was impressed with my credentials and that I was just the sort of individual he was looking for to fill the position. He thus told me I was hired, pending a routine civil service background check. I waited and waited, then learned I had been disqualified, although the personnel department would not give me a reason for having disqualified me. Discouraged and despondent, I left Los Angeles.

After returning to Missouri for a brief visit with my mom, I returned to Miami during the early spring of 1973, when I once again worked for the Miami Herald for about one year on a swing shift in the computerized type-setting department, during which time I was also cast in a Murray Woroner police training film.

I was once again unfairly terminated from my job at the Miami Herald, merely for making justified complaints about unnecessary ongoing harassment – vulgar harassment – by other employees – harassment witnessed by the supervisors and that was interfering with my ability to concentrate.

A young female employee, Marie Lazaro, was playing loud and annoying rock music on her portable radio during the graveyard shift. After I complained to the on-duty supervisor and the supervisor told her to turn her radio off, she merely told me to “fuck off,” then turned her radio up even louder. The supervisor then made no effort to further intervene.

Lazaro’s desk was directly behind mine. I had previously complained to higher ups that I witnessed the same female vandalizing Miami Herald property. Marie ripped off the signal light above the elevator door during a coffee break in the presence of several other employees, including me.

I afterwards landed a job as a truck driver for Don Kimbrough and his wife, who owned a garden shop in Coconut Grove, a couple blocks from my home. I stayed with them for a little over a year, working six days a week for $1.50 per hour; hardly enough to even make ends meet. Thus, I moved in with Pat, a female – 20 years older than I, to be exact – a woman I had known and dated since before I was first married. She was the divorced mother of three adult children and also a grandmother.

Pat’s ex-husband was a pilot for Eastern Airlines. She was at the time working as a secretary for Key Biscayne Hotel, then owned by the Mackle Brothers, and wasn’t making much more money than I was. In fact, she was the one who proposed that we get a place together after her own landlord raised her rent. However, after living together for about a year, we split up. She needed a male scapegoat and I, of course, was never interested in playing that role. I am being more than kind to her, considering she has surviving grandchildren, for not going into detail.

Although Pat had previously been president of the PTA at the Key Biscayne school her three kids attended and also worked for several years as secretary to the president of the Miami Chamber of Commerce, she was angry with me because I was not interested in smoking marijuana with her and her closest friends, Barbara Gross and Noel Davis, a former Hollywood screen writer, whose dad was a co-founder of the Western Auto Store chain. As a result, Pat tried to malign me to others.

Pat was unbelievably treacherous in every meaning of the word. Pat’s oldest son, who was then living in San Francisco and married to an Asian woman, had not spoken to her in years, so she informed me. Her ex-husband was remarried. He and his wife and Pat’s daughter resided on Marathon Key. Her daughter was a flight attendant, whose home base was Marathon Key. She occasionally stopped off to visit us, in between flights. Pat’s younger son, so Pat informed me, would periodically mail his mom a package containing marijuana he cultivated on his farm, provided him by his father, in Lebanon, Virginia. One of Pat’s closest allies, so she claimed, was a Coconut Grove cop. Coconut Grove was the sort of community where everyone, so to speak, minded their own business.

I returned to Missouri in 1975 to care for my mom, whose health was severely deteriorating as a result of continuously crippling arthritis, which had spread to one of her knees, and other complications. She had also lost her hearing in one ear, for which she had undergone an unsuccessful vascular surgical procedure a couple years before.

I later attended Crowder College, Neosho, Missouri, majoring in architectural design & building construction technology for only one semester, when my mom died as a result of surgical negligence during a knee prosthesis, which resulted in her never able to walk again.

Using a small legacy my mom left me, I thus pulled myself together and designed and built (with my own two hands) my own country home on a small acreage I purchased in Eastern Oklahoma, which I was soon forced to sell after becoming a victim of assault and battery – my foot was crushed by a Pakistani gourmet restaurant manager over a dispute about an unfair billing – an incident that left me disabled for months.

As a result of the incident, the Tulsa Police Department closed down the restaurant – Jamil’s – for multiple violations of city, county, state and Federal laws. Jamil's customarily advertised a weekend House Special – a full-course gourmet dinner, to include a ‘Special Grilled Filet’ for $6.95 each. Although I ordered two House Specials, one for myself and one for a lady friend (the mother of an Episcopal priest), I was wrongly billed for two T-Bone Specials, listed on the menu for $16.95 each.

Jamil’s was also in violation of alcoholic beverage control regulations, as they were not licensed to sell liquor by the drink, even though they advertised and served their customers Margaritas, for which they were charged extra.

After working as a laborer at two Federal government construction sites along the Gulf Coast – in Biloxi and Corpus Christi, I was laid off as a result of having contracted ptomaine poisoning from contaminated Biloxi city drinking water. I was later laid off for filing a complaint about failure to provide safe scaffolding for laborers. The incident was covered up by U. S. government investigators. I thus drifted into poverty and homelessness.

After regrouping, I returned to Los Angeles and worked as a professional fundraiser for Gordon & Schwenkmeyer, a Los Angeles based political fundraising organization, Although I raised over $250,000 for Gordon & Schwenkmeyer during my five months of employment with them – working seven days a week at minimum wage -- $4.50 per hour, I was repeatedly harassed for complaining about unnecessary disturbances created by the boss’s brother, Steve Gordon, and Joey, Steve’s obnoxious openly gay buddy, during working hours in the office. Because I complained to the supervisor after first repeatedly and very diplomatically asking them to please hold it down, Joey called me a ‘cocksucker.’

Steve Gordon later severely reprimanded me for NOT falsifying the results of a poll of residents of Big Bear, that I was asked by Mike Gordon to conduct to determine if Big Bear residents desired to have their independent electric power system replaced by an outside electric power corporation. Steve Gordon’s actions were witnessed by Alex (a co-owner, supervisor and former Lebanese-American California assemblyman) and by Becky (also a supervisor). Neither Alex, nor Becky made any effort to back me up when I afterwards complained about the mater to Steve’s brother, Mike Gordon. I thus soon after resigned, citing ongoing corruption and intimidation by the owners and supervisors of Gordon & Schwenkmeyer as my reason for leaving.

I was also harassed by other workers for being so hard working, professional and honest.

I was ultimately awarded Supplemental Security income, a monthly subsistence allowance.

I then returned to college to get certified as a mental health counselor and was subsequently appointed an advisory board member for a couple of mental health agencies in Los Angeles County.

I left Los Angeles City College as a result of incessant harassment of me by Dr. Shirley Krauthamer, who had me stalked and harassed by peace officers merely because I filed a very appropriate complaint with the dean of students regarding her ongoing harassment of me in the classroom.

Krauthamer had tried to get me to call a fellow classmate a son-of-a-bitch in the classroom. Because I refused to comply with Krauthamer’s highly inappropriate demands, she urged my classmates to harass me with vulgar expletives, which I why I filed the complaint with the dean.

Unfortunately, the LACC administrators attempted to cover up the matter in order to protect Krauthamer and those others who were at fault. It was a gross miscarriage of justice.

I afterwards filed a damage claim against Shirley Krauthamer and the Los Angeles College District, in which I am seeking $50 million in compensatory and punitive damages.

I was later unfairly terminated as a Los Angeles Department of Mental Health agency rehabilitation counselor and case manager merely for complaining about agency fraud and ongoing harassment – vulgar sexual, racial and ethnic slurs – by offensive supervising female case managers – one Jewish and one Hispanic – and by a black male office secretary.

I was subsequently re-hospitalized for observation as a result of my very appropriate reaction to the ongoing physical and mental abuse and violation of my rights. During my hospitalizations I was a victim of horrendous abuse and cover-ups by attending physicians, psychiatric nurses and other attendants.

I have since founded the non-profit Tom Shepherd World Educational Foundation, the American Gentile Anti-Defamation League and the Shepherd-Montessori Institute. I work on a daily basis as a volunteer teacher, as an artist, as an architectural designer, and as a journalist.

To declare that an individual is suffering from a delusion is a mere hypothesis, which in all probably has no basis in fact. Such is the view of R.D. Laing, J. P. Sartre, Thomas Szasz, M. D. and others.

Far from being a disease, schizophrenia is actually a very purposive and meaningful attempt by an individual to cope with a catastrophic loss of self-esteem. Such is the view of John Modrow, author of How to Become a Schizophrenic, and of others.

Hell is other people – Jean Paul Sartre

Teenage & Adult Views of Author

Views of Author with Family & Childhood Friends Family Album

1969 View of Author Tom & Wife Sue Ann (Librarian)

Introduction by Senator Richard M. Webster

last updated 06-26-2011

For John Forbes Nash Jr. and my brother

John Snyder Blaise Shepherd

Genius and Madness

Two of the world’s most celebrated and brilliant men, President Theodore Roosevelt and Prime Minister Winston Churchill have been diagnosed (post-humously) with bipolar disorder by eminent (and fashionable) psychiatrist Ronald R. Fieve, author of Moodwing. Nobel Prize winner John Forbes Nash Jr. was diagnosed with schizophrenia by a team of the so-called ‘best’ psychiatrists, all of them vultures. Dutch painter Vincent Van Gogh has been diagnosed, (post-humously) with schizophrenia and bipolar disorder. Is anybody really sane? Just a rhetorical question.

The Crime of Psychiatry: Millions of Americans, diagnosed as mentally ill, are drugged and confined by doctors and are supported by the state, not because they have a disease, but because they have been checkmated out – disenfranchised – primarily as a result of cruel disparagement – aberrant psychological conditioning instituted by political leaders, athletic coaches, military drill instructors and the CEOs of the military-industrial complex that rules America.

The destructive conditioning is reinforced by teachers, government and corporate employers, military leaders, the alcoholic beverage industry, the criminal justice system, the pharmaceutical industry and by their bedfellows – the psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and psychiatric social workers – those who are presumed by the naïve to be helping their client-patients. They (we schizophrenics) have been checkmated out.

We claim (via the framers of the Constitution) to be one nation under God. Furthermore, the God-fearing religions of America (primarily Christianity and Judaism) have always declared it is wrong to kill: Thou shalt not kill is one of the Ten Commandments.

Yet teenage males are required to register for the draft when they turn 18. If they are conscripted or enlist, they are then desensitized and taught that is not only OK to kill, in the name of God and Country, but exactly how to kill. They are furthermore taught that if they think otherwise they are wimps, cowards, or pansies. Since no man in his right mind desires to be called a wimp, a coward or a pansy, males thus proceed to maim and kill others in order to justify their right to American citizenship, as well as their right to exist as men – as so-called real men.

Although modern-day Jewish Americans typically claim they abhor the institution of slavery, the fact is that the Jewish holy book, The Torah (a/k/a The Old Testament of the Bible) justifies slavery (Leviticus 25:40-45) – more precisely Jewish law justifies the right of Jews to own non-Jews (Gentiles) as permanent slaves and to pass on their slaves to their Jewish children. Acting under the leadership of Queen Isabella of the Spanish Crown, it was the Hispanics that actually imported the African slaves into the Western Hemisphere (to include North America, Middle America, the Caribbean Islands and South America) over 500 years ago. Aaron Lopez (a Portuguese Jew) was one of the leading slave traders in the Americas.

We still have slavery in America. We Americans simply substitute a different word to justify human exploitation of the poor by the wealthy: capitalism. It is, of course, an unpardonable sin – unpardonable by society – to denounce capitalism – even though capitalism is indeed a form of legalized slavery.

Although presumably all people experience romantic and erotic feelings for certain individuals of the same sex, we dudes are taught rule number one: not to talk about it – not to be honest about the fact that there is a homoerotic side – or dimension – to every individual. Thus, as a disclaimer of sorts, everyone is taught to point his (or her) finger at everyone else. Ironically, the victim of such fingerpointing often forgets to sound out with the old adage It takes one to know one.

If you tell the truth, you’re committing an unpardonable sin – unpardonable by society – by two-faced society – two-faced God-fearing society. It is, of course, the Jewish holy book, The Torah, that justifies murdering any two men that would sleep together: Leviticus 25:20. If a man lies with another man as he would with a woman, the two of them have committed an abomination. They shall surely be put to death. Their blood shall be upon them.

As far as I can see, there ain’t no straight dudes, unless you wish to define straight as one who tells lies. Of course, we all tell lies and cheat. That’s what bein’ a man is all about. When anyone receives a degree in business, whether it’s from Harvard, Yale or Podunk University, he (or she) has been trained in the art of deception – how to steal and get by with it -- how to exploit your neighbor.

America’s Supreme Court justices, commanders-in-chief and legislators indeed always have been and still are highly mentally conflicted –unable to differentiate between right and wrong – and they have been since the framing of the Constitution.

An individual diagnosed as having any form of schizophrenia is one who understandably is confused – severely confused, as well as despondent – because he was reared in an environment in which his (or her) mentally conflicted teachers, coaches and his mentally conflicted governmental leaders quite apparently confused right from wrong. Right was, in fact, wrong and wrong was, in fact, right.

We are all products of the formal and informal educational process. As my Beverly Hills psychiatrist, Dr. David A. Thiele, philosophically explained to me back in 1991, There is no right or wrong. However, few psychiatrists or judges or prosecutors are as forthright as was/is Dr. Thiele when he made the statement. However, I am not putting Dr. Thiele on a pedestal, as I believe that his statement was perhaps more intended as a disclaimer for his own actions or behavior AND for the actions and psychopathic behavior of others working in the so-called mental health system.

Every two weeks, at the beginning of each of my talk sessions, I compliantly dropped my pants and bent over in front of Dr. Thiele, while he injected my butt with a powerful so-called ‘anti-psychotic’ drug known as Prolixin. I was, in effect, Dr. Theile’s scapegoat. He would then, like all the others, persuade me to resume drinking – just have a little glass of wine now and then – realizing that the alcohol was only facilitating the schizophrenic process – and likely to bring on a psychotic episode. The various methods he and others (working in the so-called mental health system) used to psychologically demean me only further entrapped me in the checkmate situation I had, and have, found myself in since my birth – or early childhood.

Prolixin, as well as the other so-called anti-psychotic drugs or neuroleptics that I was being primed with were merely exacerbating my checkmate situation by keeping me mentally confused and overly compliant – as a borderline zombie. Psychiatry was thus profiting from my documented psychological and physical disability. Psychiatry – as it is commonly practiced – is indeed a fraud.

All I ever desired to do was to get back to work – in the capacity for which my government educated me – as a creative and productive individual – as a leader – and to be rewarded for my leadership qualities, not punished! Our so-called democracy cannot function without designate slaves – cogs – to make the machinery operate. The schizophrenic is not interested in playing the role of a slave. He wants his share of the pie. He, quite understandably, wants the same salary or social security or SSI payment as a U.S. senator or congressperson. Ironically, members of congress write their own meal ticket – they legislate their own generous salaries.

I shall repeat myself. America is not a democracy, nor will it ever be a democracy until the citizens have the same economic cushion – the same safety net – as the commander-in-chief and the congresspersons and the CEOs that run the military-industrial complex. If you believe otherwise, it is you, not I, who is suffering from delusions.

There is no justification for incarcerating any American citizen, especially an Armed Forces veteran, whether the incarceration is in a jail or in a mental institution, as our laws reinforce economic inequality. They also reinforce violence.

The criminal justice system in America, as in virtually every nation, is a mockery of justice. A democratic criminal justice system places education above incarceration. The military code of justice is ALSO a mockery of justice, as the enlisted man – those serving in the ranks – have virtually no rights – they are required to salute and kiss the asses of the male and female brass in charge – on a daily basis – if they complain they are more than likely to be incarcerated – either in a brig or in a psychiatric hospital – then discharged as being either insubordinate or as mentally unsound or even more ludicrously as being confused over one’s sexual identity.

Senator John McCain’s father-in-law, Jim Hensley, so flouted the alcoholic beverage control laws of America while operating an alcoholic beverage concern in Texas that he was arrested and convicted of a felony. Although he was never pardoned, he merely moved to Arizona and re-established Hensley & Company, which ultimately became one of the largest alcoholic beverage distributors in America, a concern inherited by his daughter (now reported to be worth over $100 million, as well as CEO of Hensley & Co.). Arizona officials and the Feds looked the other way, while other Americans (convicted of any felony, whether pardoned or not) are permanently denied the opportunity to engage in any alcoholic beverage enterprise or to become licensed in many other business enterprises or professions, to include that of law and medicine! Most are living in virtual poverty – the result of inequality under the laws of America.

It should never be forgotten that the Kennedy Dynasty came about through illegal alcoholic beverage trafficking by family patriarch Joe Kennedy during the Prohibition Era. The wealth of the highly esteemed Kennedy family is thus derived from organized underworld crime, as is the wealth of the highly esteemed Bronfman family (Seagram Canadian Whiskey), who was also engaged in underworld trafficking in alcoholic beverages across the Canadian and U. S. border during the Prohibition Era. Senator Joseph Lieberman’s dad’s wealth largely came from his legal operation of an alcoholic beverage dealership. Legal or not, alcoholic beverages are dangerous, mind-disabling drugs!

Our primary and secondary schools are in virtual shambles. Our colleges and universities, to include our Ivy League colleges, are largely staffed by incompetent, unscrupulous professors – many of them drunkards – yet they are paid salaries that enable them to live as virtual millionaires, while down-grading (or even expelling) those students that are brave enough to speak out in the classroom about the situation that exists – and to file complaints with administrators – who are as corrupt as the teachers or professors.

There is also no justification in a U. S. Senator or Representative receiving an average annual salary of upwards of $130,000, plus an ultra-fat retirement pension, when a diagnosed schizophrenic veteran commonly receives NOTHING and is thus checkmated to a virtual homeless existence. If a diagnosed schizophrenic or paranoiac is awarded Supplemental Security income, his average monthly check is likely to be far beneath that necessary to be able to afford any home other than a room without bath in a third rate hotel.

If a U. S. Senator or Representative can legislate his (or her) own paycheck, then why can’t a U. S. veteran legislate his (or her) own paycheck? Rhetorical question. Think about it. Think about all of the above.

Hon. Thomas Mitchell Shepherd,

Mental Health & Criminal Justice Consultant,

U. S. Veteran & Urban Planner & Designer

To learn more about the bureaucracy that perpetuates this fraud, read Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society’s Unwanted by Thomas Szasz, M.D., which can be purchased from Amazon.com.

Also read The Crime of Psychiatry by Yours Truly.

Psychiatrists, egocentric psychiatrists, typically claim they know more about another individual than the individual knows about himself!

We live in a sick society and it is the society and its barbaric religious institutions (that institutionalize economic inequality, human exploitation and state-sanctioned murder it its various forms) that needs to be treated in lieu of the psychiatric patient, society’s scapegoat. In short, it is the individual at the bottom of the dehumanizing pecking order that is most likely to be branded as “mentally ill” or as “schizophrenic,” even though he may indeed be the sanest member of society, and quite possibly the most ethical.

‘The Church provides God-fearing people with a justification for mistreating others, while taking refuge in the Church’s barbaric teachings.’ -- Tom Miguel Blaise Shepherd

It is my opinion that most psychiatrists, virtual prescription clerks, get through medical school because they have the ability to memorize classified data, not because they have any extraordinary analytical ability!

I am now 70+ years old. By the way, while I was an outpatient at the West Los Angeles VA Hospital in Brentwood several years ago (May 1996) when I was 55 years old, I attempted to explain to the panel of psychiatrists, social workers and psychologists who were evaluating me the exact manner in which I was abused by a Coast Guard training instructor while I was on active duty.

The Coast Guard instructor, a First Class Petty Officer, humiliated and punished me by making me get down on the ground on my hands and knees and pick up my classmates’ cigarette butts during a full hour, while my classmates were receiving instruction in a nearby classroom. I myself did not smoke. In fact, I was about the only member of my class that did not smoke.

I was subjected to such humiliation/punishment merely because I was wrongfully cited as being “out of uniform” as a direct result of the fact that my Coast Guard classmates had taken my uniform cap off my head and were playing catch with it while the instructor looked on. Instead of punishing the classmates who took my hat, he punished me!

As I was relating the story to a team of VA psychiatrists, psychologists and social workers, Dr. Thomas Grieder interrupted me by shouting, “Shut up or I’ll call the police!” There was also a handful of other veteran patients on hand to witness Grieder’s conduct, rather misconduct.

Grieder then wrote me a prescription for Trazadone, an antidepressant, which I soon learned, can cause extremely unpredictable behavior, i.e., mood swings. That is state-of-the art psychiatry at the Veteran’s Hospital or at any other psychiatric institution.

Shut up or I’ll call the police

-- Dr. Thomas A. Grieder, VA psychiatrist (May 1996)

Shut up! Take the drugs! Shut up! Take the drugs!

The fact is, I had weaned myself off psych meds three years previously, with the help of the VA, and was doing relatively fine, other than that I had several months before (May 1994) become the victim of a false imprisonment as a result of a false complaint a Los Angeles City College female psychology professor made as retaliation because I had several days before filed an appropriate formal complaint with the dean, regarding her psychological harassment of me and other students. I had also recently (October 1994) lost a job with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health, merely for making a justified formal complaint about fraud and about incessant racial-sexual harassment of me by my supervisors and co-workers. I had discontinued the use of alcoholic beverages for relaxation purposes three years before, although psychiatrists had repeatedly encouraged me to resume drinking.

It is alarming to me, and should be to others, that none of my psychiatric records (which I have since obtained) mention the fact that my primary complaints to other psychiatrists at the VA and elsewhere were (1) that I was a victim of repeated assaults (and batteries) by my instructors, by officers, by petty officers and by seaman shipmates, including sexual assault and ongoing psychological humiliation, which was the primary reason I was confused and depressed during my active duty with the Coast Guard – that my disability was indeed service-connected; (2) that I had been a victim of a false arrest and false imprisonment by a licensed California clinical psychologist and psychological professor in May 1994 and (3) that I had also been a victim of an inappropriate AND unlawful termination as a mental health counselor merely for complaining about fraud and racial/sexual harassment of me while I was working for the mental health agency in October 1994. (3) that I was being harassed by strangers in restaurants and other public places and even by people connected with the mental health system merely because I had developed very noticeable involuntary nervous tics as a result of the psychiatric medications I had been administered by the VA and by other government-operated psychiatric clinics.

In several instances, I was actually refused service because of my involuntary nervous tics, which I generally was not even consciously aware of until someone else pointed out what I was doing – rapidly twitching the second and third fingers of my left and right hand).

In other words, all California government agencies, as well as VA officials, afterwards covered up the fact that I was a repeated victim of racial/sexual harassment, false arrest and unlawful termination BY administrative professionals working within the mental health system and that I was also a victim of psychiatric drug treatment – neuroleptics and antidepressants.

The VA did, however, document on my medical records my reportage in 1985 of the fact that I had been a victim of inexcusable and inhumane abuse by psychiatrists and administrators working for the Tulsa (Oklahoma) Psychiatric Clinic a year before I voluntarily entered the West Los Angeles VA Hospital. The VA also documented that my very first psychiatric hospitalizations (in 1959 and 1960) stemmed from my depressive reaction (characterized on other records as a schizophrenic reaction) to the multiple attempts by my male Coast Guard supervisor to get me into a sexual relationship with him that I did not desire to have and the attempts by him and other shipmates to sabotage my romantic relationships with civilian females.

Interestingly, the VA so-called medical experts, including social workers, failed to document (on paper) my claim that I was a victim of an onboard ship assault and battery by a Coast Guard shipmate during my first year of service with the Coast Guard (while I was still a teenager) and the fact that my assailant’s antisocial behavior was no doubt triggered as a result of alcoholic beverages he had consumed at an onboard ship beer party hosted by the captain of our ship while we were anchored offshore in the South Pacific during the summer of 1958. I was thrown out of the hammock I was sleeping in, onto the deck, then pounced on by my much heavier and older assailant, who simultaneous pounded the back of my head against the deck and attempted to strangle me. I myself was 19 years old at the time. That particular incident has been covered up by the Coast Guard, by U. S. Public Health Service physicians and by the Veterans Administration physicians and administrators for nearly 50 years.

The matter also been covered up by members of U.S. Congress, to whom I have repeatedly complained – including my own cousins, Senator Barry Goldwater and his son Representative Barry Goldwater Jr. (Senator Goldwater’s wife and Representative Goldwater’s mother, Margaret Johnson Goldwater, was my mom’s second cousin).

My VA medical records also document my reportage that I had voluntarily left several places of employment as a result of being asked to engage in telemarketing business practices that I believed to be unethical or unlawful. One of those former employers was Gordon & Schwenkmeyer, Inc., a democratic party professional fund-raising agency, owned and operated by California Democratic Party leaders Mike Gordon and Kris Schwenkmeyer, where I worked during the spring and summer of 1985, just before entering the West Los Angeles VA Hospital. I raised approximately $250,000+ for them during my five-month employment with them, working 7 days a week at minimum non-living wage ($4.50 per hour), although I was repeatedly intimidated and humiliated for refusing to engage in fraudulent practices that would have, so I was told, enabled the owners to make more money.

One of the individuals that intimidated and humiliated me was Steve Gordon, also an employee of the agency and the brother of Mike Gordon. Mike Gordon was later was elected to serve as a State Assemblyman from Los Angeles. While working as a State Assemblyman, he and Schwenkmeyer continued to operate their fund-raising business, raising millions for other Democratic Party candidates across America. Schenkmeyer was appointed to the board of the California Fair-Employment Commission.

Two licensed Beverly Hills psychiatrists I had seen in private practice between 1991 and 1995 were in the habit of encouraging their patients to supplement their medication with alcoholic beverages. One of the physicians even had a bar in his office and was in the habit of offering his patients a cocktail, as supplementation, while he conducted talk therapy with them. That same physician told me he himself was regularly taking Trilafon, an anti-psychotic prescription drug.

The reason I was continuing to visit the VA Hospital is (1) I suffered from chronic sinusitis and nervous tics, conditions that had been aggravated by the psychotropic drugs prescribed for me by VA psychiatrists, and (2) I was still seeking retroactive compensation from the VA for having been hospitalized, diagnosed and stigmatized as having a “mental disorder” while serving my country during my teenage years, between 1957 and 1960, during which service I had been a victim of assault and battery and ongoing sexual harassment by my own shipmates. My documented (and unsealed) psychiatric history, had gravely affected my ability to secure employment commensurate with my ability, had affected the way others treated me and had (quite understandably) negatively affected my self-esteem. The end result: I was economically impoverished. My own government had placed me in a checkmate situation.

My alleged psychiatric condition was first documented by government psychiatrists while serving my country as a teenager. I was hospitalized in three different psychiatric facilities (for observation) as a result of my reaction to continuous double-bind communication and abuse (virtually identical to the example I gave above) by the sociopathic Coast Guard officers in charge, as well as by Shore Patrol officers. The official documentation of my alleged condition on medical records, which tended to skew the actual circumstances that led up to my hospitalizations, rendered me virtually unemployable for the remainder of my adult life by virtue of the fact that in several instance I was actually denied employment, especially government employment, based on the mere existence of a psychiatric record. When I was hired, I was ultimately terminated merely for complaining about harassment, verbal abuse or fraud by my supervisors or co-workers, invariably because my employers or supervisors used their knowledge of my psychiatric history as a justification for firing me! It was a case of you’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.

I would not have even applied for Supplemental Security Income in 1986, were I not indeed chronically destitute as a direct result of the way my own family (virtual millionaires) treated me, the way the United States Coast Guard treated me, the way my unscrupulous former employers treated me and the way psychiatrists themselves had treated me over the years.

If I was not fired, I left voluntarily left as a result of continuous harassment by supervisors or coworkers, most of whom used alcohol and marijuana, cocaine or amphetamines on the job. A couple construction workers I was working with in Biloxi were smoking marijuana quite openly, a fact that affected their own motor coordination. Workers I was working with in a Teledyne machine shop in Culver City (Los Angeles) were so stoned on marijuana that their own motor coordination was affected and resultantly creating a major problem for the factory. I was victim of a verbal threat by a Negro co-worker, who was obviously so stoned on marijuana that he could not even walk straight. Because the white supervisor was not about to rock the boat by confronting my assailant, even though he was well aware that the he was stoned on marijuana and in the habit of threatening other white workers with bodily violence, I voluntarily left my job. His oft-repeated favorite phrase of intimidation was: I’ll cut your nuts off.

Others (most of them members of so-called minority groups) I was required to work with at the Miami Herald and other places were so stoned from smoking marijuana on their coffee breaks that they were disrupting the workplace, then telling me to “fuck off” when I complained about the noise they created by playing loud rock music on their portable radios, yet it was invariably I who was fired, merely for complaining about their disruptive behavior, behavior that was interfering with my own ability to work. They were also upset because I would not smoke with them.

While employed as a case manager and rehabilitation counselor for a Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health agency, I was the only employee that did not smoke, drink alcoholic beverages or use other drugs, including prescribed psychiatric drugs, yet I was terminated merely for complaining about fraud by management, as well as for complaining about the offensive ethnic/racist/sexist remarks made to me (a gentile Anglo-Saxon straight white male) by so-called minority supervisors and co-workers, disruptive behavior caused by the supervisors in charge in part as a result of the fact that they were mentally incapacitated by the legal chemicals they themselves were using and in part because they knew they could hide behind their own diagnoses as being “mentally ill,” and therefore not be held responsible for their actions.

The fact is that after I was hired by the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health agency as a case manager, after completing an internship, I learned, through my own investigation, that the agency had been fraudulently certified by the fiduciary agent in charge, an Asian gentleman, who held a doctorate in social work from USC and who was also affiliated with the United Way, as there was no licensed psychiatrist, clinical psychologist or social worker on hand in the office to supervise case management work. The two women in charge of case management, both of them on psych meds, were neither licensed as social workers, nor did they have a required master’s degree in social work.

My father abandoned my mother, brother and me at the time of my birth. My millionaire oilman/banker paternal grandfather, Eugene Frank Blaise, who was also a Thirty-Second Degree Mason, did absolutely nothing to financially assist us or to nourish us, as a responsible grandfather would be expected to do in any society. However, we did receive an annual Christmas card from him, with a check enclosed in the amount of $10, and signed Best Wishes, Grandad. An intimidating hate note, written by his wife, Marie, warning us that we would never be welcome in their home, was occasionally inserted in the envelope. Neither he, nor Marie, our step-grandmother, would permit my brother and me to visit him at his home in Tulsa, overlooking the Arkansas River, only 90 miles from where my older brother and I lived during our childhood.

The reason for the neglect by our grandfather and step-grandmother had nothing to do with anything my brother and I had done. It had to do with the mere fact that the two of them resented our mother (in part for even having given birth to us) and were thus taking their resentment for our mother out on us, two innocent children. We were their scapegoats.

I thus had neither a father, a grandfather, an uncle, nor any other male surrogate father during my childhood to provide protection, positive role modeling and ongoing male nurturing, nurturing any boy needs in order to be able to relate well to other males, as well as to females.

My favorite picture of my mother and father, embracing each other on an Acapulco beach prior to my birth was stolen from me long ago by some anonymous thief who apparently was hoping I had money or diamonds instead of treasured romantic photographs of my mother and father in the old brief case he removed from my old car in the Vieux Carre¢.

By the way, most Westerners, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists included, appear to be extremely neurotically conflicted on the subject of human sexuality. Arabs, Greeks, many South American native peoples and the Sambians of New Guinea do not view male sexuality the same way Westerners do. For the Non-Muslim Arabs, Classical Greeks and Modern-day Sambians there is a homoerotic side or dimension to every man, which is expressed and sublimated in many different ways, including through contact sports, the affectionate abrazo and ethnic dancing. The concept of the heterosexual and the homosexual (as separate individuals or identities) is a concept that originated with ancient barbaric Judaism and has been reinforced through modern-day Christianity and Islam, a concept that has served the purpose of socially reinforcing obsessive-compulsive homosexuality and obsessive-compulsive heterosexuality. In an effort to coerce people to suppress their homoerotic side, Western cultures paradoxically propagate and reinforce homosexual subcultures and widespread neurosis among so-called heterosexuals (all of whom appear to be severely neurotically disturbed by the haunting awareness of their forbidden inner homosexual feelings).

It could be said (by me) that the arrogance of most psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and social workers is exceeded only by their ignorance and by their duplicity.

The reason those of us diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, or any other so-called mental illness, typically deny that we are suffering from a disease and refuse to take our so-called prescribed medication (mind-disabling psychoactive drugs) is that we are NOT suffering from a disease. We are suffering as a result of having been conveniently diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia, a diagnosis intended to place all the blame for the ongoing and unrelenting traumatizing physical and emotional violations of us by our parents, our teachers, our classmates, our spouses and our employers (including various divisions of the Armed Services) on a chemical imbalance of our brain’s neurotransmitters or on our brain structure. In effect, we are suffering from the fact that psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and psychiatric social workers are not being honest with us or with anyone else about the real reason for the checkmate situation we find ourselves in. It is the sigma of having been branded with a mental disorder and the resultant disenfranchisement of us by society that keeps us in a checkmate situation.

Double-bind communication has been conjectured by intelligent human beings, few of whom ever become psychiatrists, as a contributing cause of what the medical profession refers to as schizophrenic behavior. A fitting example of double-bind communication would be a wife who continuously discourages the romantic/sexual gestures her husband initiates with her, then wants to know why he is no longer interested in making love to her. Another example is the mother who refuses to breast feed her male child, who continuously castigates her adolescent son with emasculating epithets, then claims she can’t understand why he prefers the adult company of other men to the company of women.

Ironically, my own paternal grandparents $1.8 estate (as it was appraised by Harris County, Texas Probate Court in 1976), comprised largely of oil stocks and government bonds (that would today be valued at upwards of $10 million) was given away by my evil step-grandmother, in her will, to the First Church of Christ Scientists of Boston and the Theosophical Society in Wheaton, Illinois. My brother, a year older, who had been under outpatient psychiatric treatment since he was a college sophomore, and who was later operated for partially inoperable brain tumors, and who suffered additional brain damage as a direct result of three brain tumor surgeries, died homeless in Springfield, Missouri, after living a vagrant life for some 30 or more years. I learned of his death two years after his death. To have apprised me sooner of the circumstances of his death would have been an “invasion of his privacy,” so I was told by the manipulative, money-grubbing Christian charlatan who was in charge of the multi-million dollar mission where my brother, suffering from chronic seizures and festering brain lesions, last resided, during which time he slept on the floor during a cold night in February 2002, then was booted out the door at 6 a.m., along with all of the other indigent and ill vagrants, many of them no doubt like my brother, former altar boys, university graduates and Army veterans, suffering from quite understandable brain damage as a result of brain tumors and brain tumor surgeries and from inexcusable neglect by our own financially able father and our paternal grandparents.

According to John Modrow, the so-called “symptoms” of schizophrenia are mental traits common to all human kind which have been exaggerated in schizophrenics due to environmental stress; that if any person were to be put through the same types of stress that schizophrenics have undergone, the person would become a schizophrenic; that schizophrenics as such do not exist, but rather that they are human beings who have undergone terrifying, heartbreaking, and damaging experiences, usually over a long period of time, and as a consequence are emotionally disturbed –often to the point of incapacitation. [John Modrow, How to Become a Schizophrenic, p. 9]

There is no such “condition” as schizophrenia, writes R. D. Lang, author of The Politics of Experience. However, the label is a social fact and the social fact a political event. What we call normal, conjectures Laing, is a product of repression, denial, splitting, projection, introjection and other forms of destructive action on experience. It is radically estranged from the structure of being. The more one see this, the more senseless it is to continue with generalized descriptions of specifically schizoid, schizophrenic, hysterical mechanisms. Society highly values its normal men. It educates children to lose themselves and to become absurd, and thus to be normal. Normal men have killed perhaps 100,000,000 of their fellow normal men in the last fifty years. -- The Politics of Experience (1967) by R.D. Laing.

[Note: R.D. Laing is also the author of The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness, Penguin Books, 1990, a brilliant study of the so-called schizoid personality and of schizophrenia!]

Schizophrenia is not a disease. It is a diagnosis commonly made by psychiatrists, following an adolescent’s psychological reaction to the ongoing attempts of his parents, surrogate parents and society-in-general to coerce him into suppressing and repressing his very real memory of incidences in which he (or she) has been violated in one manner or another by his peers and by those role models in charge. Typically, the individual diagnosed with schizophrenia is the family’s, as well as the community’s scapegoat.

As a society, we highly value the professionally trained killer, whom we call the soldier, the hero, the “real man.” At the same time we, as a society, tend to figuratively castrate the man who is unwilling to engage himself in violence. We call him a coward, a pansy, a faggot, or a homosexual in order to destroy his manhood and thus induce him to become violent, to kill. Then we lock him up and brand him a felon. Of course, the very apparent fact is that there is a homosexual side to every man, a fact that we as a society continue to repress, to deny. -- from The Schizophregenic Society by Tom Blaise de Shepherd

The term schizophrenia was coined by Eugen Bleuler in about 1911 and accepted by the psychiatric industry as a descriptive label for a variety of so-called behavior abnormalities characteristic of dementia praecox or premature senility or of encephalitis lethargica*, a brain disease. *Mad in America, 2002, p. 163-164, by Robert Whitaker

Textbook descriptions of so-called schizophrenia are no more true to life than is an Edgar Allen Poe short story or a Thomas Harris novel. In fact, according to Hungarian-American psychiatrist Thomas Szasz, author of Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society’s Unwanted, and British phenomenologist R. D. Laing, schizophrenia is basically a myth, created by the The Establishment and the psychiatric profession for the purpose of exploiting and suppressing those individuals so labeled. Laing claims that society itself is indeed a poor yardsick for measuring sanity and that the psychiatric labeling process is not only stigmatizing, but also that it is barbaric, and serves the purpose of reinforcing dysfunctional behavior.

“The condition of alienation, of being asleep, of being unconscious, of being out of one’s mind, is the condition of normal men. And social adaptation to a dysfunctional society may be very dangerous. The perfectly adjusted bomber pilot may be a greater threat to species survival than the hospitalized schizophrenic deluded that the Bomb is inside him . . . Our society may itself have become biologically dysfunctional, and some forms of schizophrenic alienation from the alienation of society may have a socio-biological function that we have not recognized.” – R.D. Laing. The Politics of Experience, 1967.

The terms schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, major depression, attention deficit disorder and PTSD are often used, seemingly interchangeably, to diagnose the same individual, depending on who is making the diagnosis, such is the existing disagreement over the nature and diagnosis of so-called mental illness.

Typically, those whose ideas or behavior fails to conform to what authority figures determine to be the norm or whose point of view is considered by authority figures (i.e., parents, teachers and military commanders) to be unpopular are conveniently disenfranchised as being schizophrenic.

Most commonly, an individual who complains about the abusive behavior of his parents, teachers, or others is discredited as being “out of contact with reality” or as being “delusional” in order to absolve the abuser from blame: I didn’t do anything to him. He’s crazy! A case in point would be that of the female chair of a community college psychology department who facilitated a campus police stakeout as retaliation against a senior citizen male student merely because he filed a very proper complaint with the dean about her incessant harassment of him and other students while he was enrolled in one of her classes. The stakeout resulted in a false arrest and false imprisonment of the student, who afterwards filed a $1 million damage claim against the college. To learn more go to the following web page: http://www.surfingman10.org/lacc1994.html

Alarmingly, psychiatrists and clinical psychologists are the only licensed so-called medical professionals in America who are by law permitted to authorize the incarceration of an individual based merely on their own subjective and arbitrary determination that the individual is out of contact of reality and is therefore a danger to himself or others. Psychiatry, clinical psychology and criminal profiling are based on the false and dangerous premise that behavior can be predicted. Behavior cannot be predicted! To have an individual stalked by the police or incarcerated in either a jail or psychiatric facility merely because one believes one “might” commit a crime is indeed a travesty of justice.

There is no conclusive evidence to support the claim by some that violence is inborn, that one has an inherited “violent nature.” Violence, according to the best research available, is behavior that is learned as a result of aberrant psychological conditioning. Both girls and boys are taught from the time they are small children that if a boy does not engage in combative behavior, if he permits himself to be pushed around by others, that he is a “sissy” or a “pansy.”

There is NO basic emotion, instinct or personality, outside of the relationship an individual has within a specific social context. That is a point of view shared by J. P. Sartre in Critique de la Raison Dialectique (1960) and by R. D. Laing in The Politics of Experience. An individual labeled schizophrenic is an individual whose experiences are viewed to be “queer” or “delusional” only from the point of view of his or her accusers: relatives, associates or a therapist. That a diagnosed individual is actually suffering from a “delusion” is merely a hypothesis, an assumption or a judgment, which in all probably has NO BASIS IN FACT.

U.S. Armed Forces inductees are intentionally conditioned by the U.S. government to engage in violent behavior during boot camp through a process known as “desensitization.” This desensitization process involved in Armed Forces combat training exercises produces long-lasting brain neurochemical changes and is the most probable cause of PTSD, even in instances where an individual has not experienced actual live combat.

According to Dr. Eliot Valenstein (Blaming the Brain: The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health), individuals who are closely confined with their tormentors for long periods of time undergo neurological rewiring of the brain, resulting in long-term and permanent brain damage, as well as increased susceptibility to psychotic reactions in times of stress.

To learn more about aberrant psychological conditioning methods employed by the Armed Forces in order to condition recruits to be more willing to engage in violent behavior, go to the following website, created by West Point professor of psychology, Lt. Col. Dave Grossman: http://www.killology.com/art_trained_methods.htm

Brain imaging technology is commonly used to convince a patient that his or her brain does not appear to be normal, as a way of persuading patients to consent to treatment with medically prescribed so-called mood stabilizers. However, abnormalities detected through brain imaging technology may actually be the result of long-term psychotropic drug treatment, according to neurological experts. Valenstein and other neurological experts warn that pharmaceutical mood stabilizers are indeed NOT an effective solution to the problem of schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. In many instances, they are the CAUSE of the problem. In fact, neuroleptic drugs, anti-depressants and other mood-stabilizers generally only worsen the problem.

To be precise: psychiatric drugs may be the CAUSE of brain damage detected through brain imaging technology, in which case psychiatric medication is not the answer. It is the primary CAUSE of the problem.

There indeed appears to be no conclusive evidence to support the medical model of so-called schizophrenia. The medical model suggests: (1) that so-called schizophrenia is a brain disease, (2) that it is the result of an inherited genetic component, (3) that the brains of those diagnosed with schizophrenia differ markedly from other people and (4) that it is incurable. It bears repeating that schizophrenia is a label used to classify a wide variety of behaviors and no two people exhibit the same so-called symptoms.

The diathesis-stress model, which is a modification of the medical model, hypothesizes an as yet unspecified genetic predisposition to schizophrenia, which, in conjunction with an adverse environment produces schizophrenia. Such an individual is believed to be hypersensitive to the environment. Hypersensitivity to stress, according to research, produces biological changes in the brain, resulting in extremely variable behavior, attention difficulties (over-attention or under-attention), and highly fluctuating emotions. After some time, such an individual supposedly begins to shut out the world to protect himself against this hypersensitivity. The biological limits set by the genetic predisposition supposedly restrict the individual’s ability to develop social and work skills. The individual’s self-image, in turn, suffers as he falls short of familial and social expectations, as well as of his own expectations. [Schizophrenia: Symptoms, Causes Treatments by Kayla F. Bernheim and Richard R.J. Lewine, p. 96]

John Modrow, an obviously gifted man who was taken to a psychiatrist by his mother while he was still a child and resultantly diagnosed with so-called schizophrenia, provides well-documented evidence to support his own claim that the medical model of schizophrenia is virtual hogwash. He presents his life story along with scientific evidence to support his theory in his book How to Become a Schizophrenic, a book highly acclaimed by Dr. Theodore Lidz of Yale University and other members of the psychiatric profession for its soundness.

John Modrow’s Theory of the Cause of Schizophrenia

According to John Modrow, schizophrenia develops as a result of an individual being subjected to very severe and often cruel disparagement by people who are significant to him or her and on whose good opinion he or she is largely dependent from infancy up, until some especially hurtful incident produces and out-and-out panic state.

In this panic state, according to Modrow, the individual has a terrifying vision of himself as a person of no value or worth. Painful memories once repressed rise and come flooding into awareness with a gruesome, hallucinatory vividness . . . . the individual believes that things will only continue to get worse as he is inexorably swept to his destruction.

The basis of Modrow’s theory, supported by research done by Harry Stack Sullivan, is that there is nothing to be found in so-called schizophrenic thinking that is not found to some extent in the thinking of so-called normal people. Normal people, maintains Modrow, continually distort reality in order to conform and to bolster their self-esteem.

Self-deception, according to Freud, is completely involuntary and is expressed through such defense mechanisms as repression, reaction-formation, projection and rationalization. When such defense measures fail altogether, Modrow explains, the individual goes into an intense state of panic, and simply becomes “unglued” so to speak.

The typical egocentric parents of the schizophrenic usually maintain their own equilibrium by projecting their own inadequacies onto their child. The child thus becomes a scapegoat, and in order to feel wanted by the parents, the child must deny or repress his own feelings and needs and distort reality in accordance with his parents’ needs. Thus the child’s orientation is parent-centered more than it is self-centered. Often, the child is required to demonstrate allegiance to one parent, and therefore feeling worthy of that parent’s love, by demonstrating disallegiance to the other parent. The building frustration of this psychological dilemma is what precipitates the schizophrenic break.

The adolescent or young adult either runs away from home or he/she withdraws and desperately constructs and retreats into a fantasy world of his/her own creation, one that he/she can cope with, in a desperate effort to cope with the unbearable psychological conflict.

The child who is repeatedly demeaned by his own parents, stepparents, surrogate-parents and peers with severe and cruel disparagement, is stunted in his psychological development. The child thus learns to subjugate his or her own needs to the needs of his or her parents, surrogate parents and other persecutors. As a result, when the child chronologically reaches adulthood, he or she is unable to function adequately. His or her ability to make decisions is stymied by the intrusion of internal persecutors, disturbing memories (flashbacks, not auditory hallucinations) of the cruelly disparaging actions and words of the parents, surrogate-parents (teachers, ministers, coaches and military drill instructors), and tormenting peers (spouses, classmates), which dominate schizophrenic thinking. The so-called schizophrenic is thus unable to consciously free himself-herself from the controlling (and usually contradictory) wishes of what psychiatrists have termed the schizophregenic parents, often even after the actual death of the parents.

NOTE: There is no objective test available to determine if an individual is experiencing auditory hallucinations. In all probability, perhaps 99% of those individuals who claim they are experiencing so-called auditory hallucinations (imaginary voices) are either pathological liars or they have been coached or prompted by unscrupulous mental health legal aids, psychiatrists, clinical psychologists or social workers to claim they are hearing voices in order to expedite their disability claims. As an example, view the actual prompting list used to describe symptoms of schizophrenia, provided by a Los Angeles County mental health agency social worker to those claimants she is assisting in expediting SSI disability claims: http://www.surfingman10.org/image091.jpg

The fact is that mere disturbing memories of childhood-adolescent abuse indeed can severely interfere with one’s ability to concentrate, a fact that those who have not experienced severely traumatizing abuse, are apparently unable to comprehend. Parental rejection, usually by both the mother and the father, is probably at the root of all schizophrenic behavior. No amount of psychotherapy is going to restore such an individual to “normal” unless the environmental causes of the stress, including incarceration in a psych ward, are removed.

As for the use of shock therapy and drugs, it bears repeating that NOONE should be subjected to such barbaric treatment methods, which only further destroy the neural networking of the brain. Such measures do not erase long-term memories of inhumane cruelty.

As a normal reaction to severe stress, catecholamines (adrenaline, noradrenaline and dopamine) are produced in superabundance, causing a hyperaroused state. However, once the environmental causes of the stress are removed, the catecholamines reconfigure to normal patterns. It is the opinion of leading scientists that neuroleptic drugs, commonly prescribed by psychiatrists for the purpose of blocking the dopamine-receptors in the brain, are of no help whatsoever to the mental health patient. The only people who profit from neuroleptic drugs are the pharmaceutical corporations that manufacture them, the physicians who prescribe them and the pharmacists who fill the prescriptions.

Neuroleptic Drugs Cause Neurological Damage

Leading scientists have provided evidence that neuroleptic drugs prescribed to treat schizophrenia indeed are a cause of severe neurological damage in patients prescribed such drugs. The symptoms of the resultant neurological damage, including severe inner anxiety, yet stupor-like complacency, tardive dyskinesia and pin rolling of the fingers, are often mistakenly purported to be symptoms of the schizophrenia itself. It’s a dangerous Catch 22 situation in which the client frequently becomes a pawn of the psychiatric-pharmaceutical industry.

The neurological damage caused by neuroleptics (Thorazine, Haldol, Trilafon, Dyprexa, etc.) has been characterized by Robert Whitaker, medical journalist, as NIDS (neuroleptic-induced deficit syndrome). Interestingly, neuroleptic drugs are all derivatives of a common over-the-counter antihistamine known as diphenhydramine, which is also the primary ingredient in Benadryl and other allergy and cold remedies.

Although antipsychotics, also known as neuroleptics, are ostensibly given “to control delusions and hallucinations,” they actually have no specific effects on either, say Peter R. Breggin, M.D. and David Cohen, Ph.D., authors of Your Drug May Be Your Problem.

Breggin’s and Cohen’s opinions are shared by others, including Modrow, Valenstein and Whitaker.

Formerly referred to as major tranquilizers, of which Thorazine was the first, neuroleptics produce “apathy, indifference, emotional blandness, conformity and submissiveness, as well as a reduction in verbalizations, including complaints and protests.” They in effect produce a “chemical lobotomy,” to use the words of Dr. Breggin. In addition to the above mentioned side effects, neuroleptics also produce dry mouth, blurred vision, drowsiness, restlessness, muscle spasms and tremors. They can also cause side effects that resemble psychotic symptoms. So-called side-effects medications that supposedly prevent or block side effects of the neuroleptics are a “bad joke,” as they do NOT prevent side-effects. They only produce additional debilitating side effects.

Anti-depressants of all kinds, as well as mood stabilizers (including Lithium, Depacote and Trileptal), are more of a nemesis than an aid in stabilizing the nervous system. Evidence indicates that such drugs only serve the purpose of destabilizing the nervous system by increasing anxiety, provoking manic episodes, increasing the risk of migraine headaches and the risks of suicidal and homicidal behavior. Interestingly, Lithium was originally used to lower blood pressure. However, niacin (Vitamin B-3), which is not a drug, has been proven to be effective in not only stabilizing the nervous system, but in reversing arteriosclerosis and in lowering blood pressure.

To learn alternative methods for stabilizing the nervous system, read The Natural Medicine Guide to Schizophrenia or The Natural Medicine Guide to Bipolar Disorder by Stephanie Marohn. Both books are published by the Health Mind Guide Series and published by Hampton Roads Publishing Co.

The LSD Government Hoax

The laboratory development of the chemical known as LSD is perhaps one of the greatest government hoaxes on record. Interestingly, while LSD was allegedly created to cure schizophrenia, the fact is that LSD produces virtually all of the textbook described symptoms of schizophrenia: distortions of thought, including paranoid delusions and hallucinations.

It is conjectured that the overwhelming majority of individuals currently under treatment for so-called schizophrenia are individuals who either voluntarily or involuntarily ingested LSD. During the 1950s mental patients confined to government hospitals, as well as Harvard students, were given LSD by psychiatrists, in compliance with a government authorized CIA project, in order to observe the effects that LSD had on them. Others, including those adamantly opposed to the use of psychedelic drugs, have unwittingly had their food or drink spiked with LSD by mean-spirited members of the drug culture.

It is the opinion of leading scientists, including Dr. Elliot Valenstein, author of Blaming the Brain: The Truth About Drugs and Mental Health, Peter Breggin, M.D., author of Toxic Psychiatry, and John Whitaker, author of Mad in America, that psychotropic drugs are only a nemesis, in treating so-called schizophrenia, so-called bipolar disorder or any other diagnosed psychiatric condition. They are merely a chemical straightjacket, utilized by psychiatrists to stuporize and exploit their patients. The only people who profit from the use of psychotropic drugs are the pharmaceutical corporations that manufacture them and the individuals that make their living by writing and filling prescriptions for the drugs.

Balanced Nutrition and Self-Analysis is Instrumental

Balanced Nutrition

The building blocks of the brain’s chemical neurotransmitters (adrenalin, noradrenalin, dopamine and serotonin) are not the neuroleptic drugs or so-called mood stabilizers commonly prescribed by mainstream psychiatrists, but the vitamins, minerals and amino acids found in a well-balanced diet that is rich in B vitamins (especially niacin). Niacin supplements of from 500 mgs. to 1000 mgs. daily; Vitamin C supplements of 500 mgs. daily; and Zinc supplements of up to 50 mgs. daily have proven to be helpful and effective in stabilizing the nervous system, according to leading scientists. It bears repeating that niacin (also known as Vitamin B-3) has been proven to be effective not only in stabilizing the nervous system, but also in reversing arteriosclerosis by restoring healthy blood cholesterol levels and by lowering blood pressure (thus reducing the chances of a stroke or heart attack) when taken in supplementary doses of up to 1000 mgs. For more information, read Stephanie Marohn’s The Natural Medicine Guide to Schizophrenia.

Due to the economic and exploitative nature of psychiatry and pharmacology, an individual is probably better off acting as his or her own psychiatrist by practicing existential self-analysis on his own couch in lieu of undergoing any form of psychotherapy on a stranger’s couch; and by engaging one’s self in regular mental and physical exercise; and practicing habits of sound nutrition in lieu of drug therapy.

Existential Self-Analysis

The Divided Self: An Existential Study in Sanity and Madness, written by British psychiatrist and philosopher R.D. Laing, and first published in 1959, is a humanist and existentialist approach to understanding the phenomena known in medical circles as the schizoid personality and schizophrenia. The book, which was republished in paperback form in 1990, is a classic, and should be absorbed by anyone interested in existential analysis or existential self-analysis. Laing also wrote and published other books that have had a significant impact on the field of existential psychology and existential psychoanalysis, including The Politics of Experience, any of which can be purchased in either new or used condition from Amazon.com. Laing’s work is brilliant! Those two publications are classics. R.D. Laing’s theories have been berated over the years by many so-called professionals and establishment psychiatrists. However, his theories have provided a firm foundation for the research and writings of other existential thinkers, philosophers and scientists. Read his books! R. D. Laing no doubt has a gifted mind, whereas the overwhelming majority of individuals working the field of mental health, including so-called top-drawer psychiatrists, seemingly lack the broad intellectual capacity (parallel thinking) for understanding and dealing with existential concepts.

NOTE: Existential self-analysis is based on the rejection of barbaric-sexist superstitious theistic ideologies (including the ideologies of Judaism, Christianity and Islam) that reinforce inauthentic behavior and resultant personality disintegration. For instance, it is an existential point-of-view that all people are by nature ambisexual in that they have a natural capacity for experiencing romantic and erotic feelings for people of the same sex, as well as for people of the opposite sex. Because of the Biblical repudiation of the mere expression of romantic-erotic feelings between two men (Leviticus 20:13) or between two women, virtually all people reared in Jewish-Christian-Islamic cultures become neurotically disturbed and paranoid as they pass through adolescence and discover the universal homoerotic side of human nature. By nature, the so-called heterosexual is every bit as homoerotic as the so-called homosexual. The difference between the so-called heterosexual man and the so-called homosexual man is that the so-called heterosexual man attempts to conform by suppressing and concealing his own homoerotic thoughts and experiences, out of quite understandable fear of being humiliated by others. The less-well adjusted individual then occasionally displaces his inner rage onto other men.

The behavior of the Rev. Pat Robertson, founder of the 700 Club, who periodically unleashes his own wrath on other people by ranting and raving like a two-year-old and proclaiming that God is going to mercilessly punish those who fail to obey ancient, superstitious and barbaric Biblical prophecy by destroying them, is an excellent example of New Millennium insanity. Several years ago, he claimed that God was going to destroy Orlando, Florida, merely because Disney World proclaimed one day out of the year as Gay Day.

More recently, Blood-thirsty Robertson unleashed his wrath on Israeli Statesman Sharon while Sharon was gravely ill and in a semi-coma, merely because Sharon had three months before finally made the wise decision to withdraw Israeli settlers and Israeli troops from Gaza, and thus return the land to the Palestinian people. Unfortunately, Robertson’s own anti-social behavior is encouraged by others like him, who have managed to wrest their way into the White House, and into the United States Senate and the House of Representatives.

Others, perhaps not as wealthy and politically well connected as Robertson, have been locked up in psych wards and branded schizophrenics for engaging in far less disturbing behavior. The fact is that Robertson himself is an extremely dangerous psychotic, far more dangerous than 99% of those individuals who have been branded psychotic by government psychiatrists, then drugged into a stupor by FDA approved neuroleptic drugs!

Keep in mind that while psychiatrists, clinical psychologists and social workers typically insist on apprising themselves of every minute detail of their client-patient’s history, information that can readily be used to later discredit a client-patient whom they have harmed in one way or another, most mental health professionals are extremely evasive and guarded in revealing their own feelings and their professional history, other than the name of the college or university they allegedly attended.

Indeed, psychiatry is a one-way street! Perhaps the overwhelming majority of mental health professionals are not interested in helping their clients. They are primarily interested in exploiting their clients for their own economic gain! Mental health client/patients are invariably individuals who have been mentally abused and designated outsiders by their own family members. They resultantly become society’s unwanted. Consequently they have virtually no one on their ball team as it were. Thus, they are easy targets for unscrupulous mental health professionals.

NOTE: Sue Ann Johnson-Blaise, former library consultant for the Oklahoma Department of Libraries, former head librarian of the University of California at San Diego Medical Center Library and a consultant to Psychology Today magazine, reveals that during the 1960s and 1970s state mental hospital administrators were adamantly opposed to the placing of self-help books, including scientific books on neurology, psychiatry or psychology in their patient libraries. Apparently the administrators did not want their patients to gain any insight into the structure of the mental health system or to gain insight into their own difficulties in life.

As for so-called group therapy, it can be extremely non-therapeutic, especially if the licensed group therapist-leader is a sociopath of sorts and encourages scapegoating, the ganging-up on those clients who fail to conform to the group norm or who fail to comply with the whims of the group therapist. Herd-mentality commonly rules in so-called group therapy. [Group Therapy: Is It Really Therapeutic, Shepherd, 1998; also citing the case of Shirley Krauthamer, Ph.D., LACC, False Imprisonment of Student: http://www.surfingman10.org/lacc1994.html]

John Modrow’s book How to Become a Schizophrenic is remarkably well researched, well written and entertaining. You can review and/or purchase a new or used copy of his book at http://www.amazon.com or at http://www.schizosavant.com/

Also recommended further reading would be Elliot Valenstine’s Blaming the Brain, Peter Breggin’s Toxic Psychiatry, John Whitaker’s Mad in America and two books by Dr. Thomas Szasz: Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society’s Unwanted and The Myth of Psychotherapy, all of which may be purchased from Amazon.com.

Bibliography

An Existential Approach to Sound Mental Health by Tom Blaise Shepherd.

Are We Training Our Kids to Kill? by Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, http://www.killology.com

Blaming the Brain: The Truth about Drugs and Mental Health by Eliot S. Valenstein, Ph.D.

Cruel Compassion: Psychiatric Control of Society’s Unwanted by Thomas Szasz, M.D.

The Divided Self, by R. D. Laing.

How to Become a Schizophrenic: The Case Against Biological Psychiatry by John Modrow

Mad in America: Bad Science, Bad Medicine, and the Enduring Mistreatment of the Mentally Ill by Robert Whitaker.

Misuse of Psychiatric Drugs for Diminishing One’s Capacity for Critical Thinking

Natural Medicine Guide to Schizophrenia by Stephanie Marohn

Politics of Experience by R.D. Laing Highly recommended reading ******

Schizophrenia: Symptoms, Causes, Treatments by Kayla F. Bernheim & Richard R. J.Lewine

Toxic Psychiatry by Peter R. Breggin, M.D.

Your Drug May Be Your Problem by Peter R. Breggin, M. D. and David Cohen, Ph.D.

DVD Fiction Depicting People with Schizophrenia

(Remember, these films are pure fiction, some

a more realistic portrayal than others)

The Cobweb. Newly released (2011) for DVD home viewing. Originally Produced in 1958 by Vincente Minelli, this lengthy yet well made film stars Richard Widmark (as Dr. Stewart McIver, a swaggering, articulate psychiatrist), and co-stars a top-rated cast – all of equal stature – to include Lauren Bacall, Lillian Gish, John Kerr, Charles Boyer, Gloria Graham and Susan Strasberg. The setting is a large private psychiatric facility. The, focus is on Widmark’s attempt to provide surrogate fathering and psychological support to teenage patient John Kerr, a Widmark protégé, who has artfully copied Widmark’s swagger and manner of speaking. While Widmark neglects his glamorous wife, played by Gloria Grahame, a male colleague, played by Charles Boyer, moves in to console her with booze and romantic gestures. Meanwhile, Widmark and Bacall become involved. There is ongoing melodramatic feuding amongst the staff regarding whether or not the curtains should be made by the patients as a form of occupational therapy or provided by independent professional decorators. If you are a Widmark, Bacall, or Kerr fan, you’ll probably enjoy viewing this color film, remade in 2010 especially for DVD and of excellent quality. Excellent cast. Excellent story line. Excellent direction. Fine performances.

David and Lisa. Portrayed by Kier Dullea and Janet Margolin (Annie Hall), are patient-students at a special school designed for treating and educating mentally afflicted teenagers. The two main characters somewhat over-dramatically portray their symptoms of two varieties of schizophrenia at the beginning. David has a phobia about being touched – in any way – by another individual. Lisa has a need to communicate in rhymes. As the drama moves forward, it becomes a more toned down and interesting story – less melodramatic. Available in DVD

Lilith. Based on a novel written by J. R. Salamanca, Warren Beatty and Jean Seberg star in this movie (released in 1962) about the obsessive love between a therapist and his patient. Vincent (Beatty), a war veteran, returns to his bleak Maryland hometown and takes a job as an occupational therapist at Popar Lodge, a private mental institut8on for the wealthy. There Vincent meets a young schizophrenic, Lilith (Seberg), an enchanting patient whose fragile beauty bewitches all those with whom she comes in contact. Lilith and another patient (played by Peter Fonda) who is also bewitched by Lilith ultimately commit suicide. Vincent, who has become involved in the ménage-a-trois of sorts, ultimately seeks help for himself. Lilith, it seems, bears a haunting likeness to Vincent’s own mother, who died during his early childhood – after his father abandoned the two. He was reared by his grandparents. This truly is an excellent movie.

Through a Glass Darkly. 1961. VHS. Directed by Ingmar Bergman. In Swedish with English subtitles. A very bizarre plot.

Beautiful Mind, A. 2001. Directed by Ron Howard. Loosely based on a biography of Princeton mathematician John Nash, written by Sylvia Nassar. Nash’s first commitment to a mental institution was initiated by his wife. Movie has been criticized for its radical departure from Nasser’s biography and for its non-realistic melodramatic Hollywood special effects. Screenwriter Avika Goldsman, whose mom was/is a psychiatrist, was later accused by Nash of having made the movie for the purpose of promoting the use of neuroleptic drugs in the treatment of schizophrenia, when in fact Nash’s condition did not improve until he voluntarily refused neuroleptic and antidepressant drug treatment. In other words, neuroleptic drugs were more of a nemesis than an aid to Nash or to anyone else diagnosed with schizophrenia.

Birdy. 1984. Directed by Alan Parker. VHS. Film about lifelong friendship between two men, before and after their Vietnam service. Somewhat corny.

Clean, Shaven. 1993. VHS, DVD. Directed by Lodge Kerrigan. Peter Winter, just released from a mental hospital is desperate to find his daughter, who was given up for adoption by his mother during his confinement. Very good acting by Peter Winter, who plays Peter Green, a schizophrenic recently released from an institution, who returns home only to find his daughter has been put up for adoption by his mother. This is an especially excellent drama in that the portrayal of the double-bind communication, believed by many theorists to be so much at the root of schizophrenic confusion, is very well executed by the actress playing the mother. The reaction of Peter to this contradictory form of communication is also well executed, as are the portrayals of his daughter, whom he ultimately locates. Supporting actors also do a commendable job in making this film perhaps one of the best in terms of portraying the various symptoms most commonly associated with schizophrenia.

Benny and Joon. 1993. DVD. Directed by Jeremiah Chechik. About a Benny (Aidin Quinn), who owns an auto repair shop and who is a sole caretaker of his kid sister, Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson), who supposedly has “schizophrenia.” She “hears voices.” Sister develops friendship with Sam (Johnny Depp). It’s a well-written, light-hearted movie with an excellent cast of actors, well directed. Highly recommended.

The Saint of Fort Washington. 1994. VHS. Directed by Tim Hunter. Film about homelessness and “schizophrenia,” starring Matt Dillon, who claims he “hears voices,” and Danny Glover. The acting is good. The violent behavior of certain black males towards Matt and Danny is overwhelming at times. If you are a sensitive, as all schizophrenic people are, then you will probably not want to view it a second time. The film does, however, portray in a very realistic way the horrors of homelessness, especially for someone suffering from schizophrenia. The only criticism of this reviewer is the inclusion in which Matt claims to ‘hear voices’ – supposedly experiences ‘auditory hallucinations’ which makes the film somewhat of a hoax. Anyone who claims to experience ‘auditory hallucinations’is, in the opinion of this reviewer, merely faking schizophrenia. Flashbacks, yes! Recurring, troublesome memories, yes! Paranoiac fear, yes! Scattered thinking, yes! Despair, yes!

Angel Baby. 1995. Directed by Michael Rymer. Winner of seven Australian Film Institute awards. Two people with so-called schizophrenia involved in a dedicated love relationship. Main characters played by John Lynch and Jacqueline MacKenzie. Could not believe this film actually took any award. The story line is poor, the directing is poor and the acting is poor. An unbelievably poor film, even though the actors are obviously talented.

Shine. 1996. VHS. Directed by Scott Hicks. Film garnered seven Academy Award nominations. About a gifted Australian, pianist, David Helfgott, afflicted with a so-called “mental disorder,” not specifically named as schizophrenia. It was amazing to this reviewer that this film garnered any nomination. The story line is poor, the directing is poor and the acting is, in my opinion melodramatically boring.

Mrs. Dalloway. 1998. VHS. Directed by Marleen Gorris. Based on the Virginia Wolf novel, Mrs. Dalloway. Septimus Warren Smith, home from the battlefields of Italy, exhibits many classic features of what physicians call schizophrenia.

Pi. 1998. VHS. Directed by Darren Aronofsky. Deals with the complex relationship between insanity and genius. Lead character is a brilliant, reclusive mathematician.

Spider. 2003. Directed by David Cronenberg. Spider (Ralph Fiennes) is in a constant struggle to overcome a traumatic event early in his life. He has been offered a second chance at life after a long stay in a mental institution and returns to the streets where he grew up; sent to a halfway house under the stern but unsupervised watch of Mrs. Ilkenson (Lynn Redgrave). Quite realistic in the sense that the main character does not experience auditory hallucinations. Rather he has flashbacks of his early life in England, when he witnesses his father kill his mother so that he can enjoy a relationship with a cheap whore he has picked up in a dive. He ultimately, as a young boy, devises a scheme to murder the two of them by carbon monoxide poisoning, a scheme that is thwarted, after which he is sent away to an institution. Excellent acting by major characters, as well as by supporting characters.

For more information and reviews of above listed films, which may be purchased new and used online go to Amazon.com and select Movies-TV as a category. Then type in the title of the film. Some of these films are available in good used condition at prices from $1 up, plus $3.99 S & H.

Amazon.com Google Search

Citizens Commission on Human Rights

Investigating and Exposing Psychiatric Human Rights Abuse

Founded in 1969 by Thomas Stephen Szasz, M.D.,

Professor of Psychiatry, University of New York, Syracuse

enter Citizens Commission site

Shepherd-Widmark Center for Sane Living

~ founded by Thomas M. Shepherd ~