Gender: Male
Status: Divorced
Age: 66
Sign: Capricorn
City: RICHMOND
State: Virginia
Country: US
Signup Date:
11/25/07
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Sunday, March 30, 2008
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MY RELIGION: All Men Are Created Individuals
"All men are created equal." That maxim premises the American Declaration of Independence. But in fact no one has ever believed it. Certainly the framers of the Declaration did not. Whole classes of humans were meant to be left out. Possibly the masculine formulation "men" was chosen as a gender-neutral reference, as it often is. But no such excuse can be given for the Founding Fathers’ attitude toward black people. Many of the Founding Fathers were actually slaveholders.
And twenty-first century people have their own biases. Aren’t criminals accorded unequal treatment? So are the intellectually deficient. I was once incarcerated on the charge of mental illness. Preach to me about the equality of man!
The truth is, even if I hadn’t had that experience I myself wouldn’t believe the principle. All humans of all eras have observed the obvious fact that men have different abilities and accomplishments. I was once a college professor. It seemed to me that we teachers spent half our time evaluating colleagues for promotion or hiring. And of course ranks were allocated in classrooms. The whole idea of academe is to grade people according to differences.
What I do believe is that all men are created individuals. Everyone believes this about him. He believes he is a distinctive being with a unique set of characteristics. But almost everybody falters at believing the same about others. The human tendency is to lump other humans into types. And the most disappointing form of such classification is racism, racism broadly and realistically defined as regarding a group of humans other than one’s own as subhuman. This clearly has been a strong urge throughout all eras of humanity. As I said, our white Founding Fathers viewed blacks this way. In instance after instance one form of racism has been eliminated only to be replaced by another. Types of racism are almost innumerable. Greeks versus barbarians, Jews versus Gentiles, Aryans versus non-Aryans--every such group has designated another group as people to look down on. This propensity of humans dies hard. I was once homeless in Mississippi. Everybody knows that in Mississippi the duality once was whites versus blacks, even moreso than in the rest of the country. This form of racism has now been significantly moderated in Mississippi. But with what result? In Flowood, Mississippi, I once walked into the back room of an antique store. Gathered around a pot-bellied stove were a ring of furniture refinishers. The first thing I heard was a man saying, "Anyway, all those Palestinians look alike." (And I can tell you from personal experience, all homeless people look alike too.)
"All men are created equal" has a religious connotation. I am not referring to the inclusion of the word "created." The sentence continues with "endowed by their Creator..." "Creator" is almost always taken to mean "God." But the formulation would have had the same force had "Creator" not been capitalized. Then "creator" would mean only "origin" or "by their nature." No, the religious connotation come from the justification people often supply for the maxim. They say that the explanation of the equality of man is that we are "all children of God."
Myself, I do not believe in God at all. But I do believe in individuality. So I do believe the revised maxim which titles this essay. That belief is as much a religious viewpoint as is theism. So this essay is as much a religious essay as would be an essay on theism and equality. Some atheists think that their position amounts to freedom from religion. But I prefer to regard it as instead a religious alternative.
Moreover, the development of a new idea is always a reaction to an old one. So this essay cannot avoid criticizing theism, in particular Christianity because that is my background.
Christianity at its core is racist. The duality all varieties of Christianity insist upon is "saved" versus "not-saved." It might be thought that Christianity is ultimately not racist because in its view the not-saved can be admitted to the realm of the saved if only they will accept Christ. But some Christian denominations believe explicitly in predestination. According to this doctrine the not-saved are doomed to that status from the beginning of their existence. And all Christians have to admit that some cultures are removed logistically from the message of Christ. In many countries inhabitants know about Christ only sketchily if at all.
What exactly is going on when other humans are regarded as subhuman? Well, to us the members of nonhuman species precisely lack individuality. This is the paradigm of racism. A deer is pretty much like any other deer. A lion is pretty much like any other lion. So Christians construe the not-saved as subhuman by stripping them of individuality. I myself have been approached many times by Christians attempting to convert me and save my soul. All I was to these Christians was "government issue," a potential Christian soldier wearing the same uniform and doing the same duties as anybody else. These evangelists could not have cared less who I was distinctively or what I had done or was doing that was noteworthy.
But on its face an even greater enemy of the religion of individuality is science. Science produces knowledge by making generalization, i.e. lumping members of groups under scientific laws. For example, medical doctors diagnose people by detecting diseases shared by some or a lot of other people. But I shall now argue that the maxim that all men are created individuals is precisely the most scientific way there is of looking at humans.
Actually, it is a superficiality to say that science is primarily concerned with generalizations. The nitty-gritty of science is the collection of data, bits of information acquired one at a time. Derivation of generalizations comes from collecting together such bits of information. Every little bit of information is decisive. If just one bit disconfirms a generalization, then the whole generalization fails.
So science in the end is minute analysis of things, examining things one by one. In other words, it regards all things as individuals. In particular, to the biologist every member of any species is an individual. Every lion is not pretty much the same as every other lion. So the biologist would regard the contrary attitude of most humans toward other species as itself racism.
But this is an understandable prejudice. All species have special regard for members of their own species. The root of morality--and I would say thus the root of religion--is the special benevolence that humans feel toward each other. If humans truly would treat each other as individuals, they would be being especially scientific about humans. This is the ultimate justification of individualism and of the religion of individuality.
THE END
copyright (c) 2008 by Kenneth Edwards
11:24 AM
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Friday, March 14, 2008
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BRINGING TOBACCO TO THAILAND
One day in 1950 when I was eight years old I sat at the table in our kitchen in Greeneville, Tennessee, fascinated by something unusual my father was doing. He was doing it with a hypodermic needle. This intrigued me because I had asthma and he used the same hypodermic to give me shots of adremalin. In those days a hypodermic was used over and over, it being sterilized each time by boiling it in water.
We were about to depart for Thailand where my father had been hired as a tobacco specialist by the Thai government. What was my father doing with the hypodermic? Tobacco seed are very small. He was shooting up one of my little sister’s stuffed animals with tobacco seed!
The tobacco seed in question had to have been burley tobacco. That was the only variety grown in our area. What Daddy was specifically employed to do in Thailand was set up a tobacco experiment station in the northern part of the country. At that time native Thai tobacco leaves were only the size of a human hand. The strain needed to be improved. Burley tobacco has large leaves. When I was an adult Daddy told me he hadn’t been sure it was illegal to take the seed out of America, but he thought it prudent not to ask anyone.
We left Thailand to come back to America after only six months, Daddy having successfully completed his task. But how can you improve a strain of plant in just six months? How many generations of tobacco is that? What I think Daddy did was simply sow little tufts of cotton from my sister’s stuffed animal. Voila! A strain of tobacco with a large leaf.
And that is how it came to pass that for fifty years and well into the twenty-first century the Edwards children have fondly remembered Thailand. Back when "the sun never sets on the British Empire," our father Charles Henry Edwards smuggled burley tobacco seed into Thailand and in six months revolutionized that industry there.
--from Thanksgiving Robin and Other Short Writings by Kenneth Edwards (an as yet unpublished book)--
copyright (c) 2008 by Kenneth Edwards
8:42 AM
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Thursday, March 06, 2008
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THE HIT
It had been one of the first hot days of spring in Jackson, Mississippi. After dark I climbed to the top of the levee at the end of High Street to enjoy the evening breeze. In case you don't live where levees abound, the typical levee is a long trapezoidal mound of earth, often with a primitive dirt road on top. I sat down on the dirt road on the side facing the Pearl River, Jackson's river. I was a couple of feet from the levee's slope.
Then a car, with only its headlights visible in the dark, came along the edge of the river, which was about fifty yards from the levee. The car stopped. Five gunshots rang out! I said to myself, "My goddness! That may have been a hit!" For a denizen of the inner city like myself, where violent crime is hardly uncommon, that was not an implausible thought. So I rolled down the levee on the river side as far as I could and clung to the ground, fearing that otherwise my profile might be visible against the city lights. I should have stayed like that with all parts of my body glued to the ground. But curiosity got the better of me. Against my better judgment I raised my head to see what would happen next. Right after the shots, the car immediately turned around, drove to the levee and on up it, and then apparently down to High Street.
I pondered what I should do. I had only matches and I thought if I went to the water's edge I could light all of them and never spy a body even if it was nearby. Anyway, I really didn't want to find a body. So I concluded it was my citizen's duty to go to where I could call the police.
Right at the end of High Street on the city side of the levee is a car dealership. As I descended the levee I saw the lights in the building were on though the dealership was probably closed for the night. But maybe some personnel were still inside. So I walked through the gate toward the building.
At the gate was a man in a parked car. Not knowing who I was dealing with, I meant to walk nonchalantly past him. But he called out. I asked, "Are you a security man?" He confirmed that he was. I told him what had happened and demanded he call the police on his car radio. He was hesitant, but I insisted.
When the patrol car came, I repeated my story to the policeman. Pointing "through" the levee, I told him the exact spot where the mysterious car had stopped by the river. He got back in his patrol car and drove to the top of the levee and on along the top, all the time shining his side light down to the water's edge, which as I said was fifty yards away. Then he drove on down the dirt road to where he could exit, and radioed back that he had seen nothing. He didn't return, and that was the end of the matter.
Of course he didn't see anything! From that distance of fifty yards he could not possibly have seen anything lying in the bushes. It was a very superficial investigation.
Why didn't he make a more thorough investigation, walking to the river to the spot I had pointed out, so that with his powerful flashlight he could actually see what might be there? The answer is clear. I was a homeless person, and a homeless person is not taken seriously.
I walked away, and never returned.
THE END
--from Thanksgiving Robin and Other Short Writings by Kenneth Edwards (an as yet unpublished book)-- copyright (c) 2008 by Kenneth Edwards
7:56 AM
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Sunday, March 02, 2008
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DIFFERENT WOMEN (poem)
"I understand, sir, that you've been married To both a black woman and a white woman. Is that correct?" That's right, Jay.
"Well, I hesitate to ask this, but, well, is there any difference?" There certainly is, Jay. "Well, could you tell us about it?"
Each has her advantage, Jay. Take the white woman. It is very pleasant to run your hand through her hair, Without having to worry, About breaking a finger.
"Now I know, I shouldn't ask this, But what is the black woman's advantage?" Her advantage is her skin, Jay.
"I find that hard to believe. Do you mean to say there's a difference in their skin?" There certainly is, Jay. "OK, go ahead and tell us what it is."
A black woman's skin, Jay-- Is black
Or brown
And that's beautiful.
People are always puzzled as to how I came to write a poem about being married to both a black woman and a white woman. But it is a puzzle to me how anyone could be puzzled. My two marriages had three distinctions. The white woman was Barbara McKee. Lasting twenty days, I once thought that marriage was the shortest in history. I sent it in to the Guinness Book of World Records! The black woman was Bonnie Butler. So I was one of the first white men in the history of the South to legally marry a black woman, in Kentucky in 1970. How brave was it to marry a black woman? Ask any black man! Lasting seventeen years, I am certain that that marriage was the longest on record! "Different Women" is as objective as you can get. Don't white women spend all year trying to get their skin brown like black women's? And don't black women spend all week trying to get their hair straight like white women's? Add to this the fact that most women in the world are both dark skinned and straight haired. But some people don't get that last point. I once showed the poem to a Vietnamese woman. She became incensed, and ran me out of her shop. Now, why would I think I might gain from showing "Different Women" to a Vietnamese woman? Why? I'm so misunderstood!
--from Thanksgiving Robin and Other Short Writings by Kenneth Edwards (an as yet unpublished book)-- copyright (c) 2008 by Kenneth Edwards
6:36 AM
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Tuesday, February 26, 2008
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USING THE BUDDY SYSTEM TO COMBAT HOMELESSNESS
Current mood: excited
SPEECH by Kenneth Edwards Delivered to Shady Grove United Methodist Men Richmond, Virginia, March 1, 2007
When I came to Richmond almost two years ago now, some of the first people I met were Hal and Doris Craddock. We’ve been friends ever since. It was out of this friendship that Hal approached me and asked if I would speak to you. I said I would. So Hal went to your president and got permission.
Ever since, Hal has wondered if he did the right thing. He’s been apprehensive as to how I would do. Well, Hal, so have I! We’ll finally know in a few minutes, won’t we? Thank you for that nice introduction.
When it was first suggested to me that I might be an expert on homelessness, I was offended. To begin with, I thought light was being made of the gravity of my situation. When I was homeless, I was busy surviving. I wasn’t a sociologist doing surveys, even if I had known how to. A young man once asked me: "What do you do when you’re just hanging out?" I made the obvious answer: "When you’re fighting for survival, there is no such thing as hanging out."
In the second place, I thought I was being stereotyped. Does your having a home mean you are an expert on people who have homes? I doubt you think so. You know that you don’t even know very well the people who live on your street. You may exchange pleasantries with them when you pass them out walking, but you know that nobody knows what goes on behind closed doors. So just because I was homeless doesn’t make me an expert on homelessness.
On the other hand, the so-called experts don’t seem to be expert either. I picked up the Times-Dispatch a few weeks ago and saw a headline. It said that in the past year the number of homeless people in Richmond has actually gone up. So there are grant receivers pulling down good salaries to analyze the problem of homelessness in Richmond and then do something about it, and what is the result? The number of homeless people in Richmond has increased! So the experts don’t seem to know much about homelessness themselves. Maybe, then, I am as much an expert as anybody is.
But something happened not long ago which made me suspect that I after all am an expert on homelessness. I was watching on TV a police drama set in the middle of Manhattan. It is nighttime, and two detectives go into an area where there are congregated a lot of homeless people, looking for a particular homeless person they want to interview. The scene on the TV screen is of all these people standing around several roaring fires. I looked at that scene in amazement. I was asking myself, "Where did that screenwriter think they got the wood?" Do city officials in New York place piles of wood at strategic spots for homeless people to help themselves to? I don’t think so. I instead figure that on a cold night the typical homeless person in New York is standing in the dark, with as many clothes on as he can manage, in a doorway attempting to shield himself from the biting wind.
Oh, sometimes you’ll find something to burn. One cold night I had a small fire going. All the time I was looking around for something to add to the fire to keep it going. This got down to where I said to myself, I’ve got two pairs of gloves, one on me and one I’m keeping in reserve. But if I need that second pair of gloves in the future, I’ll let the future take care of itself. So for a little added warmth on that night, I burned this pair of gloves. That’s what homelessness is. Get out of your head the idea that homelessness is a group of men standing around a warm fire toasting marshmallows. That’s just not the way it is.
Well, if I can spot an obvious flaw like that, which television executives thought, probably rightly, the American public across the country would buy--maybe I do know some extra about homelessness after all. So from now on I am going to take seriously ideas I have about what can be done to combat homelessness.
I want to briefly discuss with you tonight one such idea. People think in terms of reaching as many homeless people as they can. There are all these big-scale programs meant to benefit large groups of people. But that approach hasn’t seemed to help. So my idea is to take the opposite approach. Each person interested in helping the homeless, should pick out only one homeless person to be a friend to, get to know, and do things for. I’m urging the buddy system as a way to combat homelessness, the same as we use the buddy system in other contexts.
That’s what homeless people need, friends. Nobody will be a real friend to a homeless person. Picture in your mind a group of volunteers standing behind tables serving Thanksgiving dinner to a long line of hundreds of homeless people. Can you imagine one of those servers looking across the table and saying to one of those homeless people, "I know this is just one meal out of a thousand you will need this year. So won’t you come to my house tomorrow night for dinner?" I can’t. People think they’re better than homeless people. I was offered meals, but do you know where I was expected to eat? Standing outside the back door, that’s where.
So be a friend to just one homeless person. Now, I believe a formal organization will be required to match people up like this. You can’t just walk up to homeless person and say you want to be his friend. People are too mistristful for that. What would be your own reaction if some stranger walked up to you on the sidewalk and said he wanted to be your friend? You’d be mistrustful. A homeless person is the same way. So we need some organization which acts as a third person matching people up. I don’t know exactly what kind of organization this would be. It would be something like the Big Brothers Big Sisters program, except in our case there are two adults treating each other respectfully as equals. When I said a minute ago I had an idea I wanted to discuss with you, I didn’t mean I had everything figured out!
But if I’m not clear on this, I am very clear on what comes next. After the two people are matched up, I know exactly what the homeless person needs right off. What the homeless person needs is--a ride! Drive him places he needs to go. Transportation is a major problem for the homeless person. He has to walk everywhere. If the homeless person can’t get ahead, a big part of the reason is that when it comes to transportation he is in the same position Stone Age humans were before the domestication of the horse. Distances it takes you a few minutes to travel in your car, take the homeless person hours to walk.
Furthermore, I have in mind specific places that the homeless person needs to be transported to most urgently. First, there are a lot of medical and dental clinics for the homeless, but it seems like it takes half a day to get to them. The homeless person has a choice between doing what has to be done to get a meal that day, versus a long walk to a clinic that can be put off one more day. Guess what choice is made! The meal is a necessity, whereas it is plain tiresome to walk for hours on hard pavement.
Another place the homeless person needs to go, is government offices to get needed documents. Everybody needs official documents, especially a picture ID. In today’s society you are a non-person if you don’t have a picture ID. But homeless people have a way of losing their papers. I’ll tell you how I lost mine. It was when I hadn’t yet been homeless very long. On a morning that began cold I started out with a coat on. The day turned warm, so I took the coat off and laid it across a railing. I then absent-mindedly walked off. I soon realized my mistake, and rushed back to where I had left my coat. But the coat was gone. That coat had all my papers in it, including my picture ID. I went for years without a picture ID. So the homeless person needs to be taken to get documents that everybody has but him.
Something happens when you give a person rides. On the trips you get to talking with each other, and in this way get to know each other. Then when you get there you of course have to wait with him. After all, he will need to get back to where you picked him up. So you’ll need to sit with him at the clinic till it is his turn. Or you may stand in line with him at the government office. There is something about just waiting with somebody that draws people together. So there’s more to giving rides to someone than mere transportation. A friendship can blossom.
That’s all I have to say to you tonight. I was told not to talk too long, so I’ve come to the end of my remarks. I want to thank you for your attention. It’s been a pleasure to talk with you, and a privilege. Thank you very much.
THE END
copyright (c) 2008 by Kenneth Edwards
1:14 PM
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Wednesday, February 20, 2008
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A Children's Story: THANKSGIVING ROBIN
Current mood: busy
Kenneth was nine years old. He was very happy. He and his family were living on his grandparents’ farm way out in the country. Kenneth liked living on a farm. True, he had to get up early before school to help his father Charles and his grandfather Elbert milk the cows. But Kenneth considered it a privilege to have that responsibility.
The farmhouse had no electicity. So the only heat was the fireplace, and sometimes it got very cold. And Kenneth’s mother Ruby and grandmother Emily cooked on a wood stove. So there was lots of wood chopping that had to be done. Kenneth lent a hand at this, but of course his father was better at it. That is where our story begins.
Kenneth and Charles are out in the wood yard. Charles is chopping wood. Charles says to Kenneth, "You see that robin way at the top of that tall tree? Go get the little 22 and shoot it for Grandma to eat." Kenneth is puzzled. He had never before heard of anyone shooting robins, much less eating them. Robins are nice birds. Kenneth had always been taught not to harm them.
But Kenneth was a good boy so he did what Charles said. He went and got the little 22 they used for target practice. He took real careful aim--and shot the robin dead. It fell to the ground. Kenneth’s mother happened to be nearby. Charles shouted to her. "Ruby, Kenneth killed a robin for Grandma to eat! Take it and fry it for her."
Several minutes later Ruby came out of the house extending a frying pan. Smiling, she said, "Grandma really liked the robin and saved this piece for you." Kenneth looked at the tiny piece of bird and just couldn’t make himself pick it up. He said, "No, I don’t want it. Let Grandma eat it."
Kenneth continued to wonder about the incident. What explained his father’s unusual order? He had never known his grandmother to eat a robin before, and she never did again. He just couldn’t figure it out. He wondered about the odd occurrence periodically for years.
Now for the other part of the story. Twenty years have passed. Kenneth is now a young adult and Charles is an old man. Kenneth had an older brother named Henry. Charles and Kenneth are sitting on the front porch of the family home Charles had acquired several years before, minding Henry’s small children. A flock of birds is in the yard, pecking at the ground for seeds. Charles says to four-year-old Paul, Kenneth’s nephew, "Paul, go out there and catch a bird."
Once again Charles had issued an unusual order. You’ve heard the saying, "If you can get close enough to a bird to put salt on its tail, you can catch it." But of course you can’t get that close to a bird! It will fly away first. So for a few minutes Charles and Kenneth watched Paul stalk birds, only to have them take flight when Paul got close. Then the two men returned to their conversation.
But lo and behold, before long Paul ran up on the porch clutching a bird. "Look, Grandpa! I caught a bird!" Charles’ mouth fell open. He turned to Kenneth and said, "Well, my goodness, he did catch a bird. " Kenneth instructed Paul to loosen his grasp and let the bird fly away.
Kenneth over the years thought some but not much about Paul’s exploit, because it had happened to Paul not him. But he occasionally did return in his mind to the time when Charles had told him to shoot a robin. What explained that? he would ask himself.
The time inevitably comes when Kenneth himself is an old man. One day Kenneth is out walking. He stops in his tracks. "Hmmm," he says to himself. "A bird way back then, then a bird again. Hmmm." This seed of thought grows in his mind for days.
Finally Kenneth gets the insight he had been reaching for. A bird in the case of himself and a bird in the case of Paul make him compare the two incidents. What was similar about them? And then it came to him! The birds themselves were not what was important. Their presence had just made him put the two cases side by side.
Isn’t it true that grownups sometimes want little kids "out of their hair," for whatever reason? Kenneth’s father had no idea that Paul would actually catch a bird. On the contrary, pursuing that impossible task would keep him out his hair indefinitely. But Paul surprised him! And neither could Kenneth had been expected to be successful at felling a faraway robin. Shooting and shooting would also keep him out of Charles’ hair indefinitely. But Kenneth surprised him too, the same as Paul did! And that is why Kenneth’s father told him to shoot the robin. Just to get him out of his hair.
Now as an old man Kenneth finally understood. He filled with admiration for those two little boys of long ago.
Kenneth smiled
THE END
--from Thanksgiving Robin and Other Short Writings by Kenneth Edwards (an as yet unpublished book)--
copyright (c) 2008 by Kenneth Edwards
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Wednesday, February 13, 2008
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EDWARDS’S APPROACH TO PSYCHOSIS
The therapy I invented in my book Psychosis from the Horse's Mouth is a talk therapy, in distinction from the drug therapy usually pursued with psychosis. I myself suffered from delusions, not hallucinations, so the model for psychosis I assume is the delusionary kind. A delusion is a belief clung to despite evidence to the contrary. My chief insight is that psychotic delusions are not the highest degree of delusion. Tenets of religious faith, as opposed to reason, instead are the ultimate. Adherents of religious faiths glory that their views are irrefutable regardless of what the evidence appears to be. But the psychotic unknowingly shuts himself off from evidence rather than deliberately eschews it. Since therefore the psychotic's delusions are less than absolutely rigid, he is reachable by evidence if it is properly presented, contrary to the popular notion that the psychotic is cocksure.
Most distinctive about the psychotherapy I urge is the degree of subordination I place on the psychotherapist. The mind of the psychotic is so complex that only he will ever know its intricacies. Accordingly, the psychotherapist should relegate himself to following the psychotic's lead. When the psychotherapist sincerely shows receptivity, the psychotic will risk asking for information confirming or disconfirming the delusions. The psychotherapist may not fathom the relevance of the information the psychotic requests. But the psychotherapist should not concern himself with clarification. Instead he should dutifully seek out answers to furnish to the psychotic. This task may require time-consuming investigations outside the hospital, turning the psychotherapist into a veritable private detective or even requiring the employment of an actual private detective.
This necessity for outside work sets my proposed therapy apart from other talk therapies. But the effort will yield a payoff. The information gathered will furnish confirmation or disconfirmation of the psychotic's delusions which even the psychotic will accept. Settling the psychotic's views in this way will finally return him to sanity.
copyright (c) 2008 by Kenneth Edwards
6:17 AM
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