Dr. X's Free Associations

Friday

A Florida man was arrested and strip searched when a police officer mistook Krispy Kreme doughnut glaze for meth. This story shows how expectations can lead to misjudgments.

Someone believed to be responsible for a string of neighborhood burglaries in Chicago's Bucktown neighborhood was caught on video staring at a couple while they slept. The burglar has been dubbed the "Bucktown Creeper Ghost."

Speaking of dubbing, check out the photo of a Swedish police officer, dubbed the "bikini cop," taking down a cell phone thief.

It looks like Russia used paid internet trolls to pose as Trump supporters. It's long been known that Russian intelligence agencies use an army of paid trolls as part of a massive disinformation operation.

A Prarie View, Texas police officer who was at the scene of the Sandra Bland arrest says he wanted to testify to possible wrongdoing on the part of the arresting officer, but prosecutors silenced him and threatened him.

I saw Star Trek Beyond with a psychologist friend who asked me to go because his wife refused to see it. Our offices are in the same building, so we got together after work and saw an early evening show. I wouldn't have seen it otherwise. The film garnered an 83% positive rating from professional reviewers at Rotten Tomatoes.  The 3D and the special effects are impressive. If you like the genre, you'd probably enjoy it, but it's just not my thing. I'm not a Trekkie or a fan of scifi. Someone over at Vox thought it was deep because of the larger social themes represented in the film, but, trust me, it's not deep or thoughtful or nuanced, either in character development or at the level of broad social commentary.

Evidently, Debra Messing apologized to country singer Blake Shelton for an offensive tweet regarding his support for Donald Trump. The spat itself is of no interest to me, but something Shelton tweeted reflects a pervasive psychological naivete regarding Donald Trump. Shelton told Billboard Magazine: "Whether you love him or hate him, [Trump] says what he thinks..." No, no, no.  A politician can say offensive things, pandering to the prejudices of his audience, while not actually believing what he says. There's a name for that. It's called demagoguery. Moreover, people can and do mistake crude, vulgar, impolitic comments for authenticity, but one can be outspoken and offensive while also being completely disingenuous. Furthermore, in the heat of the moment, angry people with poor self-control habitually say stupid things they don't really believe. That's why I teach couples to take breaks when they're arguments escalate. Habitual loss of control while angry is not an adaptive quality in social conduct and it certainly isn't evidence that a person says what they really think. I believe that all of these phenomena -- demagoguery, vulgarity mistaken for authenticity, and irrational, angry outbursts -- undergird the naive belief that Trump is authentic, even though everything about his history and the findings of fact-checkers clearly demonstrate that Trump is a profoundly insincere man.

Below: Rep. Joyce Beatty trolls Melania Trump at the DNC. I don't really approve. I think it was fair to point out the blatant plagiarism in Melania's speech, especially because Michelle Obama's speech was plagiarized, but I also see Melania as something of a victim of a political operation. She is effectively a willing victim, but she is the least of my concerns about Trump.

 

What it's like to be a black police officer in the age of Black Lives Matter

Well just one man's experience. Interesting article in The Federalist.

My latest purchase

I ordered an auto code-reader. I didn't realize they were so cheap now. When I checked a few years ago, they cost hundred of dollars, so I didn't buy one.

A local auto parts store used to read codes for free, but they stopped. Since I like to do any repairs I can do on my own, this will come in handy. The service engine light is on in our old car, so I should have this device on Friday and will be able to determine what's what.

Like most people, I stopped doing oil changes myself decades ago, because I don't want to go to the trouble of transporting old oil for disposal and because oil changes are so cheap now, you can't save much money doing them yourself. You can still save a lot of money on other simple repairs going the DIY route.

The latest: the master power-window switch control in the center console was all but cooked. I bought a used master control on ebay in like-new condition for $49. Literally, it took less than 5 minutes to remove and replace the control. All I needed was a slim screwdriver to slip out the old one, unplugged two harnesses and plugged them into the new control. Popped the whole thing back into the console, and that's it. Net savings versus dealer quote: $278.00. We'll take it.

Lightning Strike

We had hours of ferocious storms on Saturday evening. Many problems with flooding, high winds and lightning, including L trains shut down by wind damage at a couple of stations and a lightning strike to a platform. Here's a video capture of a lightning strike blowing a utility pole to smithereens.

Working On

This was an off-topic addendum to the LinkedIn and Privacy post, added as a coming attraction, but then I decided to delete and repost it as a standalone preview.

We saw Cafe Society on Friday. I mentioned it and discussed it briefly in a comment here.  In the film, Allen borrows from Dickinson, just as he did to justify his affair with Mia Farrow's daughter, saying or paraphrasing (I don't recall which): "the heart wants what it wants."

I have a problem with using that as justification for betrayal, but it puts me in mind of Macbeth: "Life is a tale told by an idiot full of sound and fury signifying nothing," which Allen could have used to good effect in this film. He could have also said: life's a bitch and then you die.

The entire Dickinson's quote is: The heart wants what it want - or it doesn't care. Assuming one takes the cynical view, I suppose that implies for Allen that caring is what makes life worth living this folly, though Allen didn't say so explicitly. But that's there in the film, juxtaposed to someone in the film quoting Socrates (Plato), "the unexamined life is not worth living." He also gets into religion and afterlife as the purpose, so there are a few alternatives, but clearly he doesn't see any of them as solid solutions to the problem of death anxiety imbuing life with a sense of futility. It's more like choosing your favorite palliative.

Typical of Allen, we see a philosophical argument embodied by characters who are the least likely philosophers, all representing the neurotic philosophical arguments that preoccupy and perhaps torment Allen. In Cafe Society, the argument is about what's acceptable for relieving death anxiety. That isn't a putdown, because if you really listen to people, you know that these arguments reflect universal struggles. Ordinary people make these arguments to validate advice they offer and to justify their own hard choices. And Allen's knack for rendering these arguments in film is both compelling and amusing.

Another Thought about LinkedIn and Privacy

LinkedIn has a feature (People You May Know) to suggest possible connections. In my case, most of the suggestions are Chicago area psychologists. Sometimes I know them, but more often I don't. My assumption has been that we're matched by LinkedIn because of our shared profession and locale. That seems like a safe assumption, but sometimes I see no obvious reason that a person is identified as someone I may know. In these instances, I assume that the suggestions are persons mined from contacts of people with whom I'm connected. Presumably, they did not take the precaution I took of using a virgin email account exclusively for LinkedIn activity.

One suggested connection baffled me. That person was a high school classmate. I hadn't thought about her in decades, and there is nothing in my LinkedIn profile or the associated email account that even remotely connects me with her. It's possible she's an email contact of one my few LinkedIn connections, but that strikes me as unlikely.

There's nothing in my profile referencing my childhood or schools attended on the East Coast. My profile begins with college and grad school, which were in the Chicago area. All of my connections are with other psychologists, none of whom are tied to my high school community.

It seems more likely that she browsed my profile, which is fine, but she might not appreciate that I was given an indication that she browsed my profile.

As a free LinkedIn subscriber, one is given the option to anonymize member searches. If you anonymize, and I think most people do, you can browse other profiles without the person seeing that you checked their profile. I don't browse casually, so I haven't anonymized my profile. I don't mind if people know I've looked at their profile. They're all psychologists and, in most cases, I'm checking the profile of someone who has invited me to connect.

If you do anonymize your own profile, you can't view identities of those who've searched you. If you don't anonymize, you can see all other non-anonymized members who've browsed you. Since most people anonymize, I don't see their identities in my stats. If the high school classmate browsed my profile, she must have done so anonymously like most members, because her name didn't turn up in my stats. And yet, LinkedIn is giving me her name as someone I might know.

This just reinforces my preexisting feeling about Silicon Valley creepery in an industry full of frank ethical compromise or moral indifference. I realize that much of the business is about getting information and using it for growth and profit, but they seem so devious and underhanded about it. They offer assurances that you can lock the doors, but then you come home to find that a burglar climbed through a window and rifled through your closets.

Now I just recalled one other case of a suspect suggestion by LinkedIn. It's a person I worked with long ago outside of psychology. Again, nothing in my bio would connect me with this person and I probably haven't thought about him in decades, yet there he was, suggested by LinkedIn as someone I may know.😬

VP Analysis: Campaign Godwin

With Kaine's selection for VP, Hillary signals a campaign emphasizing the choice between compassionate, intelligent stability versus a raving, bigoted, dangerous madman. You might not agree with either of those characterizations, but I believe it's the theme they'll hammer relentlessly.

How will it go? In Trump's favor: he has an acute, intuitive grasp of the current white, middle class weltanschauung. In Hillary's favor: she has an almost excessive discipline and very smart campaign technicians.

Defensive Practice: Selectively researching legal history of referrals

An evaluation on my calendar makes me a bit anxious about the possibility of an ethics complaint or a malpractice suit down the road. Accordingly, I'll make extra efforts to be conservative in my opinions, dot every i, cross every t and document, document, document.

The suspected condition of the party being referred, along with reports of the party's behavior at work, lead me to believe they will not take kindly to findings adverse to the cause that brings them to me. I've taken a couple of additional measures to insulate myself, but nothing is foolproof.

I also took the precaution of exploring any history of lawsuits filed by this party and found nothing. If the person undergoing the evaluation had a history of filing lawsuits, I would have declined the case.

Researching legal history isn't something I typically do when accepting a referral for evaluation, but, over the years, I have checked a few times when I sensed an elevated risk to my practice. I never do a legal check of psychotherapy referrals, because I don't render opinions adverse to the explicit cause of the person seeking treatment. Psychotherapy patients see me as an ally, while those referred for evaluations typically see me as an ally of a third-party that employs me to render an opinion that may be unfavorable to their interests.

Fortunately, I've never been sued and never faced an ethics complaint. Psychologists are at relatively low risk for malpractice suits and complaints, but one area of practice, child custody evaluations, can raise risk-levels significantly.

Divorce can be life-shattering, and ordinarily sane people can get crazy during divorces proceedings. The involvement of minor children further ups the ante. I'm not up-to-date on the relevant laws because I don't conduct custody evals, but I know some states have passed legislation granting unqualified immunity to psychological evaluators appointed by the court. The immunity is identical to the immunity enjoyed by judges and prosecutors, but that doesn't mean an ethics complaint can't be filed with the licensing board. Although an ethics complaint can lead to a finding that clears the evaluator of wrongdoing, an accumulation of these cases can increase malpractice insurance rates. Besides, dealing with these complaints could be time-consuming and very stressful.

In a 2005 article, Terrence Koller (Illinois psychologist) discussed ways to protect court-appointed psychological evaluators from frivolous suits, while also protecting the rights of consumers with potentially legitimate claims of harm. Subsequent to the publication of that article, there was an Illinois court case against a psychiatric evaluator in which the court concluded that as a court-appointed evaluator, the psychiatrist was an officer of the court, and therefore enjoyed immunity from suit.

The person suing the evaluator was found to suffer from a psychological condition that would typically bar legal custody. It's also a condition that made me suspect that other professionals who do business with this person might be at elevated risk for ethics complaints and malpractice suits, so I did a little digging. I found a boatload of lawsuits dating back 30 years. If you hold an Illinois professional license of any kind and did business with this person, you may have been sued. Little doubt this person also filed some ethics complaints, but the record of those complaints wouldn't be public unless there was a finding of misconduct by the licensees and, in any case, the complaining party is always given anonymity, regardless of the outcome of the case.

I haven't named the case or the person because they're so litigious, I'd fear being sued. Even though the blog is private right now, I may open it again in the future, and I don't want to take a chance over a blog post. Needless to say, if this person were ever to seek my services, I'd politely decline and refer them to a major hospital outpatient program with an army of lawyers to back the clinician.

Film Report

The Hunt for the Wilderpeople is a quirky New Zealand film, sort of Disneyesque, but a little too weird for Disney. There was a ridiculous car chase and the psychology of the characters was simplistically rendered, but its off--beat charm kept me engaged. 75/100 stars

Rotten Tomatoes plot summary:

Raised on hip-hop and foster care, defiant city kid Ricky gets a fresh start in the New Zealand countryside. He quickly finds himself at home with his new foster family: the loving Aunt Bella, the cantankerous Uncle Hec, and dog Tupac. When a tragedy strikes that threatens to ship Ricky to another home, both he and Hec go on the run in the bush. As a national manhunt ensues, the newly branded outlaws must face their options: go out in a blaze of glory or overcome their differences and survive as a family. Equal parts road comedy and rousing adventure story, director Taika Waititi

I liked the The Innocents for its moral and emotional complexity, though the ending was too tidy for my tastes. 85/100 A joint French-Polish production, in French with subtitles.

Rotten Tomatoes plot summary:

Warsaw, December 1945: the second World War is finally over and Mathilde is treating the last of the French survivors of the German camps. When a panicked Benedictine nun appears at the clinic one night begging Mathilde to follow her back to the convent, what she finds there is shocking: a holy sister about to give birth and several more in advanced stages of pregnancy. A non-believer, Mathilde enters the sisters' fiercely private world, dictated by the rituals of their order and the strict Rev. Mother (Agata Kulesza, Ida). Fearing the shame of exposure, the hostility of the new anti-Catholic Communist government, and facing an unprecedented crisis of faith, the nuns increasingly turn to Mathilde as their belief and traditions clash with harsh realities.

Then there is Captain Fantastic, a study of paranoia-tinged, narcissistic parenting. Excellent most of the way through, but it deteriorated, reaching ridiculous implausibility in the later part of the film. Sometimes the implausible is fine, but in this case it wasn't fine. Nonetheless, I recommend it. 80/100. (Rated R, for language, frank discussion of sex and some nudity that was, IMO, essential to the film)

Rotten Tomatoes:

Deep in the forests of the Pacific Northwest, isolated from society, a devoted father (Viggo Mortensen) dedicates his life to transforming his six young children into extraordinary adults. But when a tragedy strikes the family, they are forced to leave this self-created paradise and begin a journey into the outside world that challenges his idea of what it means to be a parent and brings into question everything he's taught them.

Last up is an Indian production, Sultan. Why in God's name did we see this?! I'll tell you why. It had high ratings on Rotten Tomatoes (the ratings have fallen since we saw it), and this particular film was supposed to be a cut above typical Bollywood fare. The plot summary at Rotten Tomatoes turned me off, but the positive reviews made me think I should give it a chance.

I gave it a chance, and then I opened a Rotten Tomatoes account just too express my displeasure. Here's what I wrote over there:

The director needed 2 hours and 50 minutes to pack every sentimental Hollywood trope from the 1940s to 2000 into one dramatically overwrought, formulaic film. The production values were high and the acting wasn't bad, but this is not a film for a thoughtful person who enjoys a sophisticated plot and nuanced character development. One troubling aspect of this film was the disturbing appearance of oblivious racism. I realize that the film was produced in India, so racial sensibilities may be different from what is typically acceptable in the U.S, but there were descriptions of black fighters by the announcers during the MMA fight scenes that drew gasps from our Chicago audience. I won't quote because it was so racist and so offensive that I don't want to upset anyone who happens to read this review, but be forewarned.

For my readers: Black MMA fighters, and only the black fighters, were described as fighting like apes and gorillas. Aside from that, the film made an effort to challenge what I imagine to be prevailing Indian gender norms, but many Americans would find it a condescending effort that left the shallow, central female character ultimately conceding to tradition. All of the characters are one-dimensional, so I had no feelings about any of them, other than mild annoyance with the vacuity of the two lead characters. To my surprise, one part of the film that I didn't find off-putting was the inclusion of the mandatory Bollywood song-and-dance scenes. They went on for too long, and I'd hate them as a steady diet, but I can see why Indian movie-goers like them.  I score Sultan 25/100.  Hindi language or a Hindi dialect with some English code-switching thrown into the mix (to make a point about social class) and English subtitles throughout, even when the characters speak English.

Here's the Rotten Tomatoes plot summary:

Sultan is a story of Sultan Ali Khan - a local wrestling champion with the world at his feet as he dreams of representing India at the Olympics. It's a story of Afra - a feisty young girl from the same small town as Sultan with her own set of dreams. When the 2 local wrestling legends lock horns, romance blossoms and their dreams and aspirations become intertwined and aligned. However, the path to glory is a rocky one and one must fall several times before one stands victorious - More often than not, this journey can take a lifetime. Sultan is a classic underdog tale about a wrestler's journey, looking for a comeback by defeating all odds staked up against him. But when he has nothing to lose and everything to gain in this fight for his life match... Sultan must literally fight for his life. Sultan believes he's got what it takes... but this time, it's gonna take everything he's got. "wrestling is not a sport it's about fighting what lies within."

 

Good Stop Bad Stop, Policing the Police

A clip from a recent Frontline episode looking at police and community relations in Newark NJ.