Eleanor Howe Speakout

Submitted by heather on Mon, 09/10/2007 - 16:11


     Crazy
I'm crazy for feelin' so lonely
I'm crazy
Crazy for feelin' so blue
I knew you'd love me as long as you wanted
And then someday
You'd leave me for somebody new

Worry, why do I let myself worry?
Wonderin' what in the world did I do?

I'm crazy
For thinkin' that my love could hold you
I'm crazy for cryin'
And crazy for tryin'
And I'm crazy for lovin' you

Willie Nelson


I began to be able to face myself after reading the Preface to The Myth of Mental Illness by Dr. Szasz, born 1920 in Hungary. I could look at what happened to me as problems in living and that these were moral and not medical problems.  I wish more people agreed that he was "A giant in the field of psychiatry, and one of the most iconoclastic thinkers of our age."
(www.self-gov.org)

I was hospitalized.  When I joyously returned home I wrote:  A revolutionary - tried and true - idea for the treatment of the "mentally ill:  loving
kindness, a recognition of the person, the individual, created by God.  What is needed is a little understanding, a lot of love. It is said that the work of the Father of Psychiatry, Sigmund Freud,1856-1939 influenced thousands, including the Menningers.  Dr. Will Menninger said, "Hate is the root of all mental illness; it is the root of
all of the problems of our world.  It reveals itself in the emotional responses of each one of us.  If we would just learn how to control it."   I found that in a book aptly titled, "Living in a Troubled World"  (Hallmark
Books, '60's).  0 His brother Dr. Karl said, "It should be a help for any people to be getting three square meals a day and to know that there is opportunity ahead - things to be done, land to be turned, things to build."
(Obit, NY Times,7/19/90)
( categories: )