Dr. X's Free Associations

Vintage Photos: 1908

Chester, South Carolina. (Lewis Wickes Hine).

Mr. Smith is the overseer in Wylie Mill, Chester, S.C. He will not let his children work in the mill. Says it is no place for them. Plenty of children below 12 in his mill. He said that it is a common practice all through the South for employers in cotton mills to evade the child labor law by allowing young children to help their older sisters or brothers. The name of the small child is not on the books. "That is the way we manage it."

How Did I Miss This?

Ambidextrous Class A pitcher, Pat Venditte, versus a switch hitter.  What a mess.

This incident led to a new rule for switch hitting and "switch pitching."

Besides the advantage of choosing to pitch right or left to batters who can only hit from one side, Venditte can pitch more often than other pitchers because he throws fewer pitches with each arm.

Currently, he's playing for the Yankees club in Tampa. His record is pretty good, but he's 25 and his speed isn't great, so his prospects are probably limited.   Then again, Venditte may be 25, but his arms are only 20.

No telling if there will ever be another ambidextrous professional pitcher, so it's reasonable to call the new rule the Pat Venditte rule.

Vintage Photos: 1908

The dead body of a newly arrived Jewish Ukarainian immigrant, Lazarus Averbuch, is held up in a chair by Chicago Police Captain Michael P. Evans.   Nineteen-year-old Averbuch was shot and killed by Chicago Police Chief George M. Shippy at Shippy's home in Lincoln Park.  The chief claimed that Averbuch was an anarchist who came to the chief's home to assassinate him.

Shippy's account was largely accepted without serious challenge at the time, but those who have investigated the case closely believe that this was an unfortunate incident arising from seething political and ethnic tensions in early 20th century America.  Popular American sentiment toward immigrants was turning extremely ugly and, as a group, immigrants were suspected of harboring intentions to bring down the US government.

I haven't examined the Averbuch case closely, but those who challenge the official account of the killing say that Averbuch had just arrived from the Ukraine the month before he was killed by Shippy.  He went to the chief's home because he was seeking permission to travel from Chicago to another city.  In his home country, those who wished to travel between cities were required to obtain a letter of permission from the local constable.  It is claimed that Averbuch was carrying a letter requesting permission to travel when the chief panicked at the sight of an immigrant at his door.  Upon discovering the letter after shooting Averbuch, the chief concocted a story of a fierce struggle between Averbach, the chief, the chief's wife, the chief's son  and the chief's driver.

I suppose we'll never know what really happened.

Why pose the dead man for this creepy photo?  This photo and a profile image of Averbuch were published in newspapers of the day so that Americans would be able to identify anarchists based on their appearance.  A short forehead was one of the indicators.  Perhaps Chief Shippy was aware of anarchist facial features when he shot Averbuch.

Dr. X's grandmother made it into the US just as collective American panic all but closed the door to immigration for nearly 30 years, so I feel lucky to exist at all.  At the time, Italians were believed to be stupid, prone to violent crime and potentially out to destroy the American way of life.

Drugs v. Therapy

Lifted from the comments at Cheryl Fuller's Jung at Heart, Greg writes:

I am struck by the manner in which we as a society tend to denigrate the ambiguous. Psychotherapy is, by its nature, full of ambiguity, uncertainty and creativity. It seems that drugs promise the opposite: certainty, solidity and solace in the vain attempt to control that which cannot be controlled.

A question often arises with more thoughtful patients: do drugs and psychotherapy work at cross purposes or are they complementary treatments?  The safe answer has more and more come to be that they are complementary treatments, but I don't believe there is a definitive answer that applies to all patients.

I think Greg grasps something essential about the difference in the appeal of each approach.

Uncertainty is a space that can be occupied by anxious fantasy, but the very nature of uncertainty means that it is also an experimental space to explore creative possibilities and solutions.  In a depth therapy, we want to open rather than close this space.

Per Greg's comment, do drugs foreclose on uncertainty, reducing the possibilities for creative solutions?  Or do drugs bring about greater tolerance for uncertainty, making the creative space more user friendly?

More accommodating to individual difference is the view that there is an optimal range for distress while in therapy.  It is impossible to always stay within that range, but disabling anxiety or depression can be so chronic and unremitting that there is no room for creativity.  On the other hand, access to at least some tension is necessary to motivate exploration and creativity.  There is no point to scratching if there isn't an itch.

Vintage Con Artist

Mme. Dis De Bar

Highlights from the career of Ann O’Delia Dis De Bar

Vintage Photos: 1935

Students in Red House, West Virginia (Ben Shahn, FSA).

The Madness of Crowds ctd

A man walks through the crowd at the Ground Zero protest and is mistaken as a Muslim. The crowd turns on him and confronts him. The man in the blue hard hat calls him a coward and tries to fight him. The tall man who I think was one of the organizers tried to get between the two men. Later I caught up with the man who's name is Kenny. He is a Union carpenter who works at Ground Zero. We discussed what a scary moment that was for him. I told him that I hoped it did not ruin his day. -- leftandedart

Can you see why a wise person might not get on board with the alleged sensitivity of the Cordoba House opposition?  Sensitivity to the 911 survivors looks much more like raging bigotry in this video.

Some will say that's not what the opponents want, but as I suggested in a previous post: crowds can't handle complexity or nuance.  And they go mad when their anger is fed.  This crowd went quite scary mad.

I Get Mail

Tea Party mail, at my private account.  Today I received one of those endlessly copied and forwarded emails, this one extolling the success of Walmart and recommending that Walmart be allowed to "replace all of our "hopelessly incompetent leaders."

I don't think it occurred to my Tea Party correspondent that the first thing Walmart would do is cancel the minimum wage and throw open our southern border to unrestricted immigration.

So help me, if I have to stop this car...

I know I'm supposed to feel confused by Obama's two statements on Cordoba House, but for some reason I don't feel confused at all.

In his first statement, Obama affirmed the constitutionally guaranteed right to build the Islamic community center on Park Place in Manhattan. In his second statement on Cordoba House, Obama said that he was only commenting on the legal right to build Cordoba House. He refused to comment on the wisdom of building Cordoba House at that location. It's the difference between can and should. Why is this confusing?

Hold your horses. I didn't say that I oppose or support the construction of Cordoba House. I only said that I have no difficulty understanding the distinction between the right to do something and the wisdom of doing something. It was crystal clear to me that Obama was commenting on the former, while refusing to comment on the latter.

Vintage Photos: c 1941

"Man, possibly a farmer or agricultural laborer," FSA photographer, unknown.