SUPERMAN

Hello one and all:

This next article has been copied and pasted into this blog from the Human Mind book that became the first blog that I entered into this site.   I repeat it here to give further credence to the ideas that I have expressed in my previous blog called, --- "Refusing to take my own advice."   In the Superman story, Dr. C. Cunningham concentrated on the distorted fears that the children were experiencing and solved the problem.   In the dys-executive syndrome put forward in the previous blog, it is my firm belief that a similar concentration on relevant fears will solve the problem also.   
 

SUPERMAN

The chief danger in life is that you

 will take too many precautions.

Everyone in the city of Hamilton, which is located in southern Ontario, has a right to be proud of the facilities at the McMaster-Cherokee Medical Center.  However, I wonder how many people know that a Superman is masquerading there as Clarke Kent, --- well actually Dr. Chuck Cunningham?

During the summer of 1993, the Toronto Star newspaper carried weekend features on a children’s behavioral problem known as, “Elective Mutism.”  The main characteristic of this problem is the decision on the part of the children never to speak to anyone except their own immediate family and further, only when they are inside their own homes.

Psychologists said they were baffled.  Some prescribed tranquilizers, others said it was a genetic abnormality and the affected parents were left in an absolute quandary.  After returning from school, where she refuses to speak, one child checks every room, closet and crawl space inside her home before she starts a non-stop talking barrage with her mother.

Isn’t it obvious that these children have a distorted fear of strangers?   Perhaps they have seen too much violence and too many people being killed on TV.  Perhaps the parents, in their desire to protect the child from strangers have unwittingly added to, --- or conglomerated this

fear.  Whatever the reasons are, it is obviously a distortion of reality inside the child’s mind.

Emerging from an imaginary phone booth comes none other than Dr. Chuck Cunningham from the McMaster-Cherokee Medical Center.  In one of the most simple, yet eloquent quotes that you could ever hear, he says:  “All of the children that I have known with this condition eventually came to speak normally.”

Dr. Chuck Cunningham shouldn’t be a Doctor; he should be teaching other Doctors his expertise.  What about all of the other children who continue to fail to mature because of the bio-psychiatric bias or the insipid meanderings of unskilled psychiatric practitioners?

Again you might ask: okay --- okay, everybody makes mistakes; the bio-psychiatrists have learned from them and let’s get on with it.  Ah, but what about other more complicated behavioral problems for children as well as adults that are routinely misdiagnosed?  

What about the incorrect diagnosis for some of their patients by bio-psychiatrist who mistakenly look for physical causes to explain behavioral problems that other more competent psychiatrists and psychotherapists have shown can be corrected without drugs or long drawn out psychiatric intervention?

It is my belief that a good example of the above syndrome is the expanding conditions whose original founding member was Attention Deficit Disorder.  Give the child some kind of drug and hope that the interactive maturing process shows the child how to overcome fear, --- to learn to be assertive without resorting to aggression, --- to curb anxiety and to learn how to concentrate and not make mistakes caused by failure to pay attention.

Now, they are diagnosing the parents of these children with the same quote, “illness”, and prescribing pills for them also.  Apparently they think our Creator was some kind of an idiot and the whole world will eventually have to be given neuroleptic (mind altering) medication. 

As is the case with the elective mute children, it is about time that we realized that distorted fears are the cause of distorted behavior.  The more severe and conglomerated that the deflections become, the closer the individual, so afflicted, comes to being labeled as being mentally ill.

Ask Dr. Norman White at the McMaster-Cherokee hospital how he has to educate some people who have suffered heart attacks, to prevent them from allowing their distorted fears, and consequently their distorted beliefs, from adversely affecting their behavior and robbing them of their potential for a rewarding life after suffering a heart attack.

The increased fears that these heart attack patients are feeling, if reacted to correctly, will help to motivate them towards increased understanding of his or her personal health issues and in the process, these fears will be alleviated.  No matter how complex they are, behavioral deflections caused by fear are all negotiable.  So bring on the Dr. Chuck Cunningham’s and the Dr. Norman White’s of this world.  Their expertise is long overdue.