"Tell me about yourself," the young pediatrician said. Wearing a starched
white coat over his Army uniform, he sat behind his desk regarding me gravely
through horn-rimmed glasses. I stared back, baffled. It sounded like something a
psychiatrist might say. But this doctor was a pediatrician, not a psychiatrist! The
silence became uncomfortable. The partitions of the Army clinic were flimsy, and I
could hear a buzz of activity out in the crowded waiting room.
I always dreaded talking to doctors. Army clinics were busy, and in those days we
didn't consult a doctor for colds and minor problems. Doctors seemed intimidating
authority figures with mysterious powers to cure obscure, life-threatening illnesses. I
often felt obligated to convince a doctor my particular illness was serious. However
on this particular occasion no one was sick, and I hadn't arrived at the pediatrician's
office in my usual state of anxiety. I'd brought my three-year-old son to the clinic,
not because I thought something was wrong with him, but because a neighbor had
suggested it. I would have felt foolish admitting I'd brought my child to a doctor
simply because of a neighbor, so I explained Tony didn't talk much, was still in diapers,
and maybe he should have a checkup. Instead of examing Tony, the doctor kept
trying to intitiate personal conversation.
"How do you like the new administration in Washington?" he asked.
"It's exciting, isn't it?"
"Society will be in trouble unless people start taking responsibility for their own lives,"
the doctor said. "People expect the government to do everything for them."
I admired Kennedy, our young new president, but apparently this doctor and I would
disagree on politics. I sat silently waiting for him to begin examining Tony.
"Tell me about yourself," he said again.
Tony was busy examining the contents of the wastebasket. "Sometimes Tony's
temper can get pretty violent," I finally said, hoping to return the doctor's attention
to his patient. Maybe one of Tony's glands needed adjusting or something.
"Does he understand what you say to him?" the doctor asked.
"I'm never sure. He rarely does what I tell him, but he's independent and stubborn."
Tony was on his knees, his little blue-jean-clad rear end up in the air and his
head on the floor, trying to see under a partition into the next office. If
anyone were on the other side of that partition, they'd probably feel uncomfortable
to see his bright, inquisitive little face peeking up at them. I picked him up and
held him on my lap.
"How does he get along with other children?"
"I don't think I've noticed him play with other children."
"Does he have opportunities to be around them?"
"Off and on, I guess. Come to think of it, he doesn't play with his brother and
sister very much."
"Where do you live?"
"In a big old house on a hill behind San Rafael."
"You own your home?"
I nodded.
"You are lucky to own property in such a valuable area."
He seemed to expect a response, so I tried to think of one.
"The house is a hundred years old and has termintes," I said. "In the coming
depression, it probably won't be worth what we paid for it."
"We don't have depressions any more," the doctor scoffed.
Many of us who grew up diring the thirties, sometimes accused of having
depression mentalities, didn't really trust prosperity, but the doctor's comment
seemed condescending.
"You are probably too young to know what a depression is," I said.
The doctor frowned. I was startled by my own impertinence. Suffering from
shyness, I was rarely rude or impudent. Perhaps the doctor was making an
effort to be friendly. Army doctors were not known for a bedside manner, but
I'd never before encountered one with either time or inclination for such
personal conversation.
"Tell me about your husband," he said after a moment.
Tony slid off my lap to examine the scales. Again, I was baffled. I couldn't
imagine why our personal lives might be of concern to this pediatrician.
Surely he wasn't interested in Ike's vital statistics, such as height, weight or
eye-color.
"He's stationed in Greenland right now," I said.
"Uh-oh! That's bad."
That was a strange comment for an Army doctor to make. There was nothing
unusual about overseas duty in military families. I eyed the doctor silently, and
he continued.
"How do you feel about your husband's absence?"
"Well he'll be home in a couple of months."
The doctor glanced at Tony. After trying to turn the valves under the sink,
Tony had crawled onto a bookcase. With a self-sitisifed smile, he crouched
on the bottom shelf like a life-sized cherubic bookend.
"Ever since you came, your little boy has been running around the office
examining the equipment. He's paid no attention to me. Why, he's hardly
aware I'm in the room!"
You haven't done anything but talk, I thought, and Tony doesn't understand
much of that. However I wasn't accustomed to arguing with doctors, and I
nodded.
"Your child is not normal," he said.
"You really think so?"
His words seemed to have no impact. After all, he hadn't examined Tony
I listened to the doctor make another appointment for us, but I was puzzling
over what on earth this peculiar pediatrician had been up to for the past half-hour.
The age of scientific materialism may have begun with Descartes, but in 1961,
with the atomic bomb a fearsome recent event, materialism had taken possession
of popular thinking. The universe was believed to be composed of bits of matter,
interacting with each other according to measurable, impersonal "laws". The
simplistic, mechanical formula, "random mutation and natural selection", was
believed to have accidentally created a purposeless diversity of nature, and
similar mechanistic laws were being sought to explain and measure the mind.
Psychiatry was confident that with Freudian analysis, it had found the
psychological equivalent of E equals M,C squared. However, while most of
America was obsessed with psychiatry, it was not one of my interests. I had
heard of Freud. (I wasn't yet aware of some of Freud's discoveries, such as
his assertion that masturbation, condoms and suppressed sexual fantasies
cause impotence, consumption, paralysis, seizures and insanity.) I was
vaguely aware that psychiatrists were trained medical experts devising
scientific methods for repairing malfunctioning psyches. While I was uncertain
of the definition of a "psyche", I assumed there was nothing wrong with mine.
My ignorance of psychiatry would soon be remedied. Autism, of which I'd
never heard, was considered to be the result of "maternal rejection". Treatment
consisted of therapists (usually men) conducting an investigation to determine
why mother was rejecting her child--but trying to speak in terms that
disguised the offensive nature of their accusation. I had no premonition of what
was about to happen to us as I left the doctor's office that day. I was an ordinary
housewife and mother, easily intimidated by everyone but small children and other
housewives. I was forty years old, and the second half of my life was about to begin.
Our up-coming therapy would change me, all right, but not in ways the therapists
were hoping. While resisting the psychologists' attempts to convince me something
was wrong with my psyche, I would develop a confidence of which I never dreamed
I was capable.