Early in my practice I was consulted in the case of a 40 year old woman who was "blind" and no physician had been able to discover an organic cause. She was brought into my office, on the second floor of a no-elevator building in a small town in upstate N.Y., assisted by her mother. They came to me in some desperation
because they had heard of a young doctor who had recently started practice and was
reputed to be up on the latest developments.
I used every test I knew, plus some improvising, including psychological tests
using other sensory stimulation, testing for malingering. Throughout a long day the patient rarely spoke, answering only specific questions. The mother did all the talking, in a tone suitable for addressing a naughty child. I learned the patient was unmarried, had only one brief relationship with a man, of whom the mother disapproved. None of that was solicited by me.
In the end I told them I could find no physical reason for the blindness and recommended a psychiatrist as well as a therapist.
When they left I discreetly observed their movements. The daughter handled a stairway, exit to the street, crossing a busy main thoroughfare, with no hesitation.
I concluded the daughter had withdrawn from a very unpleasant and negative situation.
This morning I encountered another case of such blindness. I read Cal Thomas' column,
in which he blames the state of the nation on excessive liberalism and compassionate
government. He longs to return to the days of the 13 colonies, when everyone was
self sufficient and independant and government had to deal only with foreign affairs.
He takes no account that we were a huge country with a tiny population, largely
seperated in the countryside, with little that a big, central government could,
or needed, to do. The policies which brought us to our present precarious state
were fashioned as much by conservatives as liberals---lessaiz faire on the
financial institutions, rewards for exporting jobs, reckless real estate speculation
and generally hands off big business, and senseless wars financed by tax cuts.
He wants the bad old days of George Bush back! What makes him think repeating the
same policies will lead to a different result?
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As we age we become ever more enamored with our memory of earlier events and are only too happy to recount those halcyon days. It almost never occurs to us that we choose to remember only the most egoistic portions of those times and rarely recall the more painful or embarrassing details. Reliving the past serves no purpose except comfort for those suffering from dementia. The danger for anyone over the age of 20 is to dwell in the past and avoid the intellectual stimulation of creativity, objectivity and goal-setting.
In a recent blog Marty forecast a future of humiliation for a scientist who engineered a living bacteria from only synthetic material. That prediction is nearly certain to become true but that scenario demonstrates our greatest human frailty; we naturally fear and distrust that which we don't (or refuse to) understand.
If those who came before us had been as lazy as we have become we would very probably not exist today. Certainly those of us over the age of 50 would most likely be dust in long-forgotten coffins. The comforts of all-electric homes replete with air conditioning, indoor plumbing, automatic dish and clothes washers, telephones, computers and internet would not exist.
As Marty's 40-year-old patient hopefully came to recognize, we must never permit ourselves to become comfortable in letting someone else blind us from our potentials. It is a difficult, daily challenge for us to recalibrate our achievements against our ambitions but necessary for the continuation of our species.
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