Either way, we were glad to have Mark in our home.
We took him off his chemicals, with mother's approval, a few days later. Within four months, he had taken off all his weight and he fit in with the rest of the kids. There were, of course, the same problems along the way that we had with Jimmy. That's the nature of our business. We eventually sent him back home to his mother a year later.
For the next few years I was promoted to ever increasing responsibilities. I had little regard for the psychiatric profession and this practice by then. There were times when I would be training others, and I would steer the conversation to this subject, just so I could say:
"If we gave this many chemicals to animals, the ASPCA would be screaming."
Chemicalizing children was a growing "truth" among professionals, and I was out of sync. Nonetheless, I thought the practice was despicable. Most important, I never saw any improvement, in any of the kids, at any time.
To me, this was child abuse.
Keirsey
About this time, colleagues convinced me I should go back to school to get my Master's degree if I wanted to be taken serious, so I did. By 1979, I started at Cal State University in Fullerton. I was going to get my Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology and, along with learning new skills, I hoped I was going get to the bottom of the medication thing.
I knew I was enrolling as a little fish from a little pond. It's one thing to be a cocky based on self-proclaimed successes. It was quite another to go into a field where chemicals were being touted as the second coming. I didn't think I'd fit in, and I knew I wouldn't be able to keep my big mouth shut.
I was a little trepidatious, but fearless.
My first class in my first semester was Counseling 735. It was also the last class for Dr. David Keirsey before he retired from a long career. He had already written Please Understand Me with Marilyn Bates. Since then he has written several other books, including his seminal work, Please Understand Me II. He is the preeminent temperament theoretician in the world. If you want to understand human behavior, and yourself, read this book. Millions of others have, around the planet.
As the Department Head for the Counseling/Psychology Department, Keirsey developed a unique program based on the practice of doing therapy rather than learning the various theories of therapy. He was also a walking bibliography when it came to the history and evolution of human psychology. That made it easy for me. Why go through all the pain of reading this stuff if he already had, I reasoned to myself. Better to see if he had anything worth saying.
Turns out he did. A number of things. A few that changed my entire view of psychology, including an orientation to Holistic Theory that I will reserve for another time. It was at one of his initial lectures that my ear perked for the first time. There were only fifteen of us in the class, so it was comfortable.
He somehow got onto the subject of medicating children. Before academia, he had a career as a child psychologist. He worked with troubled kids in a variety of settings. He had an opinion. He expressed it, and when someone pressed him as to what, exactly, did he mean, he turned, looked at his student, and declared:
"I said I think it (the practice of medicating children), should be criminalized."
Did I hear just him right? Did he just say that giving these chemicals to children should be against the law? Yes he did. I sat up in my chair. He didn't sound at all like that doctor from UCLA. If I was hearing him right, he would have had that doctor locked up.
We took him off his chemicals, with mother's approval, a few days later. Within four months, he had taken off all his weight and he fit in with the rest of the kids. There were, of course, the same problems along the way that we had with Jimmy. That's the nature of our business. We eventually sent him back home to his mother a year later.
For the next few years I was promoted to ever increasing responsibilities. I had little regard for the psychiatric profession and this practice by then. There were times when I would be training others, and I would steer the conversation to this subject, just so I could say:
"If we gave this many chemicals to animals, the ASPCA would be screaming."
To me, this was child abuse.
Keirsey
About this time, colleagues convinced me I should go back to school to get my Master's degree if I wanted to be taken serious, so I did. By 1979, I started at Cal State University in Fullerton. I was going to get my Master's Degree in Counseling Psychology and, along with learning new skills, I hoped I was going get to the bottom of the medication thing.
I knew I was enrolling as a little fish from a little pond. It's one thing to be a cocky based on self-proclaimed successes. It was quite another to go into a field where chemicals were being touted as the second coming. I didn't think I'd fit in, and I knew I wouldn't be able to keep my big mouth shut.
I was a little trepidatious, but fearless.
My first class in my first semester was Counseling 735. It was also the last class for Dr. David Keirsey before he retired from a long career. He had already written Please Understand Me with Marilyn Bates. Since then he has written several other books, including his seminal work, Please Understand Me II. He is the preeminent temperament theoretician in the world. If you want to understand human behavior, and yourself, read this book. Millions of others have, around the planet.
As the Department Head for the Counseling/Psychology Department, Keirsey developed a unique program based on the practice of doing therapy rather than learning the various theories of therapy. He was also a walking bibliography when it came to the history and evolution of human psychology. That made it easy for me. Why go through all the pain of reading this stuff if he already had, I reasoned to myself. Better to see if he had anything worth saying.
Turns out he did. A number of things. A few that changed my entire view of psychology, including an orientation to Holistic Theory that I will reserve for another time. It was at one of his initial lectures that my ear perked for the first time. There were only fifteen of us in the class, so it was comfortable.
He somehow got onto the subject of medicating children. Before academia, he had a career as a child psychologist. He worked with troubled kids in a variety of settings. He had an opinion. He expressed it, and when someone pressed him as to what, exactly, did he mean, he turned, looked at his student, and declared:
"I said I think it (the practice of medicating children), should be criminalized."
Did I hear just him right? Did he just say that giving these chemicals to children should be against the law? Yes he did. I sat up in my chair. He didn't sound at all like that doctor from UCLA. If I was hearing him right, he would have had that doctor locked up.
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