Mind Matters


I remember as a child
watching historical movies and, as fictionalized as they may have been, it
became clear to me that the status quo didn’t change very much and that common
beliefs held sway over evidence to the contrary.

Remember the time when
people thought the sun revolved around the earth? Galileo showed otherwise and
was ostracized from his faith for shaking its foundation. Pasteur, at first,
didn’t fare any better for pointing out that what was invisible (to the eye at
least) could make us sick.

However, as a child, I
also wondered (only to myself, for fear of what the status quo might do),
“well, if in those other ages, people had such a difficult time seeing a
different reality and couldn’t expand their perspective, what are people in my
own time doing that is constricted in vision as well?” Well, my words weren’t
exactly that, but as a 9-year-old, I did also question myself: “What will I as
an 11-year-old think of my 9-year-old’s thinking and doing? How will I change
my attitude? What will I see differently (or more clearly)?”

As a 50’s child, I looked
around and wondered why there were African-Americans (“Negroes”) on only one
street of my town. Why didn’t they belong to the swim club located right on
their block? The swim club that got built post-polio vaccine (thank you
Pasteur) where my cousins became fish. Then the civil rights movement came, and
I understood: again narrow thinking and the prejudice of narrow perspective.

I remember my aunt
commenting about the white mother of five children who had been murdered by
white men for having marched for civil rights in the South. My aunt
unempathically stated that the mother should have stayed home and had no right
being there. Not unemotional myself, I ran out of the room screaming into the
street, bereft at the callousness of the words of someone I loved.

I do not wish to set
myself up as the enlightened one. My 11-year-old was aghast at some of the
thinking of the 9-year-old and surely my 83-year-old (if I get that far) will
wonder at the perspective of my 63-year-old self.

However, at this moment,
my 63-year-old self wonders if we have had a major societal regression. It was
painful for Earth’s people to be knocked off center stage when Galileo galloped
in: “what do you mean, the sun is the center of the solar system? We on earth
are the center of the universe.” Further corollaries: “We in the U.S. are the
best and the brightest and the biggest.” “I, the person, am the center of my
own universe evolutionary connectedness? No way, DNA!” Somehow, we seem to be
going pre-Galilean here.

Hence, we don’t see the
interconnectedness of our lives; we don’t get that tribal “us and them” will do
us in. I cringe that the tissues in my office are manufactured from a virgin
boreal forest in Canada. I sigh when a younger acquaintance goes to Alaska and
comes back figuring there’s a lot of space there so what’s the big deal about
clearcutting those virgin forests? I deplore the heated conversation I had with
some elderly women who are affluent and on Medicare. These women decry why they
should worry about those other people “who could get healthcare if they wanted
it or shouldn’t be in this country in the first place.” (These latter folks
clean their houses and pick their vegetables.) Need I remind them that my
family, years ago, had an incredibly difficult time getting health insurance
because our 7-year-old son had a “pre-existing condition”—recurrent ear
infections!

Yes, I am a psychologist
who “should” be talking about the latest book I’ve read to help you with your
panic attacks. Well, we are suffering a collective panic disorder from
believing that life can be controlled as long as we keep our collective walls
up and believe that rugged individualism is not for sissies—and sissies are
those who might be “socialist”(!) because they recognize the interconnectedness
of nature and people.

Interestingly ironic how
corporations, including, if not especially, the health care corporations,
manage to be for the individuals at the top and yet are considered “one body”—a
“corpus”.

I have encountered health
insurance corporations as a provider, and as a patient. As a provider, my
experiences with insurers have been frustrating—late payments, no payments,
terminating treatment, etc. My experience as a consumer is also frustrating. In
a few years, I will be eligible for Medicare but my adult children become the
worry—what will happen if they lack healthcare for some reason—lack or loss of
a job or yet another “pre-existing” condition. This is far scarier than the
bugaboo word socialism that gets bandied about whenever the common good is at
stake. Here is a quote to ponder, from Dom Helder Camara (1909—1999), who was
Roman Catholic Archbishop of Brazil: "When I feed the poor, they call me a
saint, but when I ask why the poor are hungry [or lack healthcare] they call me
a communist [or socialist].”

• Kayta
Curzie Gajdos holds a doctorate in counseling psychology and is in private
practice in Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania. She welcomes comments at MindMatters@DrGajdos.com
or (610)388-2888. Past columns are posted to http://www.DrGajdos.com/Articles.

About Kayta Gajdos

Dr. Kathleen Curzie Gajdos ("Kayta") is a licensed psychologist (Pennsylvania and Delaware) who has worked with individuals, couples, and families with a spectrum of problems. She has experience and training in the fields of alcohol and drug addictions, hypnosis, family therapy, Jungian theory, Gestalt therapy, EMDR, and bereavement. Dr. Gajdos developed a private practice in the Pittsburgh area, and was affiliated with the Family Therapy Institute of Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic, having written numerous articles for the Family Therapy Newsletter there. She has published in the American Psychological Association Bulletin, the Family Psychologist, and in the Swedenborgian publications, Chrysalis and The Messenger. Dr. Gajdos has taught at the college level, most recently for West Chester University and Wilmington College, and has served as field faculty for Vermont College of Norwich University the Union Institute's Center for Distance Learning, Cincinnati, Ohio. She has also served as consulting psychologist to the Irene Stacy Community MH/MR Center in Western Pennsylvania where she supervised psychologists in training. Currently active in disaster relief, Dr. Gajdos serves with the American Red Cross and participated in Hurricane Katrina relief efforts as a member of teams from the Department of Health and Human Services' Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration.Now living in Chadds Ford, in the Brandywine Valley of eastern Pennsylvania, Dr. Gajdos combines her private practice working with individuals, couples and families, with leading workshops on such topics as grief and healing, the impact of multigenerational grief and trauma shame, the shadow and self, Women Who Run with the Wolves, motherless daughters, and mediation and relaxation. Each year at Temenos Retreat Center in West Chester, PA she leads a griefs of birthing ritual for those who have suffered losses of procreation (abortions, miscarriages, infertility, etc.); she also holds yearly A Day of Re-Collection at Temenos.Dr. Gajdos holds Master's degrees in both philosophy and clinical psychology and received her Ph.D. in counseling at the University of Pittsburgh. Among her professional affiliations, she includes having been a founding member and board member of the C.G. Jung Educational Center of Pittsburgh, as well as being listed in Who's Who of American Women. Currently, she is a member of the American Psychological Association, The Pennsylvania Psychological Association, the Delaware Psychological Association, the American Family Therapy Academy, The Association for Death Education and Counseling, and the Delaware County Mental Health and Mental Retardation Board. Woven into her professional career are Dr. Gajdos' pursuits of dancing, singing, and writing poetry.

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