Grocery Day

This was the 'grocery day' from hell. Pop was really slow on getting off to an early start, and then my adventurousness to try out the dessert at Jim's Restaurant was a complete failure. When the waiter brought my Boston creme pie, I felt like I should have pulled out one of those combination eye-glasses and mini-microscope thingies that jewelers use. The slice of pie was so fucking small. I have dropped crumbs bigger than that. I was very close to commenting on this to the waiter, "Is that all there is? Couldn't we at least make it two slices for that price?" It didn't taste that good anyway. What a waste! I was a little hungry too and should have gone with my regular order of pancakes.

It got worse after that, though. I reached another one of those stress-points with Pop. On the trip to refill our water jug, before we go to H.E.B. to get the last of our groceries, Pop wanted to stop at Lorie's house to drop off the pancake syrup that he got for her at the commissary. It is an extra thirty minutes on top of a very long day, and I tried to make it known to Pop that I do not care to do that again, but I am not sure that he will heed me, which means I will have to either just swallow the extra helping of grief, or else act out, perhaps by declining to get the water on grocery day. This could become a little ugly. I do not know what has suddenly gotten into Pop, that he should start feeling more transgressive toward me. I hope he adjusts his attitude and drops this power-trip on his own. Life is getting harder all the time on its own terms with our old age; we do not need this ridiculous surge of testosterone charging up Pop's attitude, making life worse that it needs to be.

Shrinks

We know that Psychology/Psychiatry has a rocky history and some credibility problems. A new book is addressing this history, “Shrinks: The Untold Story of Psychiatry” by Dr. Jeffrey Lieberman. We are reminded that a big step forward for the profession was to overcome the prestige of Freud, making the treatment of mental problems into more of a scientific discipline. Though, in Gary Greenberg's book review, a psychotherapist himself, one is reminded of some of the charm of Freud's thought. I particularly love Freud's encapsulation of his enterprise, that is, to turn “neurotic misery into common unhappiness.” However, mental problems do come in more serious flavors and presumably require more than the interpretation of dreams and overcoming the heavy influence of mommy and daddy. Nevertheless, as Greenberg argues, in a note of healthful humility, psychiatry still has its problems, even with the advent of neuroscience and psychiatric drugs, and there is “the possibility that we will never know how brain produces mind”. Besides, how healthy can a society be when so many people have to live under the predatory greed of financiers and mega-corporations, which, I guess, is why I liked Freud's suggestion that the best we can hope for is to graduate into a common unhappiness, to learn to adjust and get along as best we can in a mad, cruel world. Some call it growing up.

[Source: Gary Greenberg at Book Forum.com]