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October 15, 1997
New issues Monday through Friday

Reader mail: Volume 2

Thanking our contributors

As a refugee from a more popular and lucrative magazine, I can attest to the reliability of email from Dr. A.S. Kornheiser. No matter the subject, Dr. Kornheiser can be counted on to weigh in with intelligence, wit and enthusiasm for the topic. Whether or not intelligence, wit and enthusiasm get rewarded at Suck, our own mailroom isn't exactly bursting at the seams, and we welcome all interesting letters. Artist's rendering of AS Kornheiser We're proud to have Dr. Kornheiser as a semi-regular letter-writer to simpleton, and have decided to honor his epistolary skills with a prominent yet classily understated graphic. Whenever you see the patented "An Alan Kornheiser Letter" logo (This week we're lucky enough to have two), you can be sure that whatever follows will be well worth reading.

October 1: Eliminate the Ninnies and the Twits

Dear Simpleton, Can what you've written be considered evidence that you're thinking at all, I wonder. What you've written is certainly a demonstration of arrogance, ignorance, and lack of imagination; it is also cruel. Why is it that these "maniacs" can't afford to stay on Prozac for the rest of their lives? Why is it that they are on the streets in the first place? Perhaps it has a little something to do with capitalism, something to do with Social Darwinism, something to do with massive premature deinstitutionalization, or Puritanism. Perhaps, in short, the reasons and the remedies are way more complex than your "discussion" indicates. Do you truly believe that it is society's responsibility to lock away people who disturb you? Most homeless mentally ill people are not violent; they are often extremely passive. This should be obvious to you, if you've ever walked through an area in which there are a lot of people living on the streets. I am not in favor of indiscriminate use of mood-altering drugs; however, all drug treatments of psychiatric disorders are not destructive. There actually are people who have chemical imbalances that cause them to be suicidal or that in other serious ways interfere with their lives. If these people are given a medication that will allow them to go on living more full lives, or to go on living period, what's wrong with that? Traditional psychotherapy does not always work. In fact, sometimes such therapy can be harmful, by focusing attention on imagined causes of depression, OCD, manic-depression, etc. Therapists ordinarily employ one or two theories to which, for their own reaons, they adhere. To say that a manic depressive person is suicidal because he has not come to terms with the Oedipal Complex is rather like saying a diabetic is ill because he has not come to terms with, well, the Oedipal Complex. In short, the myth of mind-body separation has been debunked. That you know nothing of psychobiology and psychopharmacology is obvious, but might be remedied by doing some intensive research. (I'd be interested to learn what, exactly, you've read on the subject.) That you seem to lack an understanding of, and empathy for, the human condition is deeply disturbing, and a lot harder to remedy. Sincerely, Melissa J. Price mjprice@sirius.com

Dear Melissa, While "no understanding of or empathy for the human condition" seems like a good advertising slogan, I take your points seriously. We're looking at two points here - it's not the government's responsibility to lock away anybody who annoys me, but it was also the wholesale emptying of mental institutions that made our mentally ill homeless population skyrocket. This population gets very little attention except when it becomes "dangerous," as in the case of Larry "The Wildman of West 96th Street" Hogue. The fact that we've substituted the horrors of the asylum for a pattern of total neglect is more disturbing than anything I can come up with. As for drug treatments, these days it seems everybody is either on Prozac or convinced Prozac is the end of civilization. That makes it kind of difficult to occupy the middle ground, but I'm in favor of anything - including surgery - that will ease the pain of the mentally ill (though I seem to have been wrong with my assumption that surgery would prove a cheaper method of treatment than medication - see below). But psychiatrists have made prescription drugs a treatment of first resort - neglecting the possibility that the debunking of the mind-body split may be not so much a final settlement as a recent development in the tug-of-war over chemical and surgical treatments for psychological maladies. Sincerely, tim

Dear Simpleton, At last a subject I actually know something about, as opposed to having interestingly literate prejudices. Drugs work. They in toto greatly increase human happiness. They aren't perfect; few things are. It's a pity we don't really know how and why they work as well as we'd like to, but we really don't know why aspirin works either. Deal with it. Or do you think Hemingway looking down the barrel of his gun was a Great Good Thing? Psychosurgery also works. Sort of. We know, with remarkably good localization, where all sorts of stuff that does stuff resides. Because the brain works with complex feedback loops, we can make good things happen by removing the correct parts. Probably. On a good day. If the creek doesn't rise. It's plausible that better research will make this kind of surgery much more reliable. It is surely better than living in the constant fear and anxiety that many patients endure. Because surgery is nonreversable, and because taking things out is only in rare cases the best possible solution to anything, microsurgery will probably mesh with other technology: implanted tubes to provide tiny amounts of appropriate chemicals, electric stimulation. All very scary, very bad Hollywood movie. Consider the alternatives. No, cost won't drive this thing. This kind of surgery is inherently expensive, and modern drugs aren't inherently highly priced. Surely a subdermal injection, such as those birth control implants in the news a few years ago, is cheaper and better. There are real issues of privacy, consent, and public vs private rights here. But until we can get away from the idiot-romantic view of madness as some kind of divine inspiration, when in fact it is inherently a limitation, not a release, we're not going to have a dialog that makes any sense. Alan Kornheiser ASKORNHEISER@prodigy.net The Doctor Is DEFINITELY In

Dear Alan, Apparently simpleton's three or four readers aren't dying for ill-informed polemics in favor of lobotomies. Hard to believe. This negative response has actually prompted us to rethink our upcoming issue: Hitler: Another View. Sincerely, tim

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October 2: Welcome to my Homepage

Good stuff. Have you tried: Click, here, see, pictures, my, dog [cat]? S.S. Pratt

All words are repeated in the exact order in which they were received. Nothing has been added. It is thanks only to the power of the collective unconscious that the web's most frequently repeated phrases make such elegant refrigerator-magnet poetry (except that in this case the only cusswords are "damn" and "hell)". Sincerely, tim