Interview today (Weds., Jan 29, 2014) with Chris Lenois as a podcast:
http://1490wkvt.com/live-and-local/vtc-goes-nuts/
Chris is a great host! The interview starts about 10 minutes in on the podcast.
All posts by drJ
It takes a nut
My most recent venture in community theater hits on a topic that has always been dear to my heart: the overuse and vulnerability to abuse of psychiatric labeling and “psychotropic medication,” from tranquilizers to anti-depressants, from anti-psychotics to social anxiety alleviators.
I was “trained as a psychologist,” meaning I got a doctorate in Clinical Psychology (NYU). Back then, ages ago, when I was a graduate student, I lamented that so much of “therapy” devolved to the prescription of a psychoactive drug and a series of a few brief contacts with a “mental health professional” (psychiatrist, psychologist, or social worker). The situation is far more extreme today than it was then.
In my college and graduate years, the criticism of the “medical model” was on the ascendancy. The logic seemed compelling: critical elements of the terminology and structure of medical philosophy and practice simply did not apply or, worse, misled us when applied to human problems. Was it every really possible to speak of “cure” in the medical sense that a seriously troubling personal problem could be effectively “treated” to the point that it became simply in the past, like a successfully removed appendix? Did concepts like “prognosis” make much sense psychological problems? Wasn’t medicine at best a rather inaccurate metaphor, a very weak fit, when transferred to talking about people’s problems in living?
Today, the medical model is more engrained than ever. We have all been well-trained to believe that psychiatric diagnoses accurately define our psychological problems; when we think of solutions, we immediately think of “medication,” — meaning a pharmacological concoction dreamed up by a megalithic drug company. We even have images in our mind of how these drugs work in our brain, increasing or decreasing “serotonin uptake” or increase or decrease electrical activity is some part of our brains. If the problem is personal, psychological, then the solution is chemical.
This is not to say that some drugs (no, I do not call them medicines; they are no more “medicines” in the strict sense of having a specific effect on a specific disorder than the old patent medicines that used to be 75% alcohol!) don’t benefit some of the people some of the time, as Honest Abe might have said. There’s no doubt that many people find themselves at least partially satisfied with how these pharmaceutical creations affect them.
But my experience is that, for all their fancy names and labels, theytend, in varying degrees, to either shut you down or speed you up. Every one has side effects, some of which are pernicious, such as the agony many report in coming off a particular “medication.” None have the kind of specificity that’s ascribed to them by their manufacturers. None, that is to say, simply relieves specific symptoms and otherwise leave you well enough alone. Tranquilizers slow you down and the “major tranquilizers” or “anti-psychotics” slow you down a whole lot more. The uppers, whether to “help kids concentrate” or alleviate depression, zip you up. The claims that this particular chemical composition has that particular psychological effect because of this particular thing that it does to the brain are largely pharmaceutical company hype.
So a psychiatrist will make a best guess about what’s most wrong with the patient and what pill is most likely to have a positive effect without creating some dramatically awful side-effect, counter-effect, or effect when the patient has to stop taking the pill for whatever reason. And if the results are not good, then the doctor will prescribe something different and see if that seems to “work.” Meanwhile, the patient isn’t talking to anyone about how to change their miserable relationships — or lack of them — let alone how their past miseries might be overcome at least to the extent that they stop screwing up their current life.
A lot of this comes out in the play we’re about to do (Nuts by Tom Topor). A person is accused of a crime. She is convinced that she can demonstrate her innocence to a jury, but she is being held in a psychiatric hospital as crazy instead of being allowed to stand trial for the crime of which she is accused. She is loaded with powerful anti-psychotics against her will. She refuses to be forced to hide behind and be trapped behind being labeled “incapacitated,” nuts.
The play unveils the potential for abuse: when small minded people are entrusted with power far disproportionate to their capacity for compassion and understanding of human nature, they can use the tools of psychiatric diagnosis and forceable treatment to impose their personal will on others for their own personal reasons, like their egos and or worse.
The point is not that every doctor who ever prescribes psychoactive drugs over the objection of the patient is an abusive, power-loving psychopath (Though who can forget Nurse Ratched from One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest or the behavioral psychologist from A Clockwork Orange?). Certainly their are some doctors who are legitimately and consistently compassionate; there are some patients who definitively need something before they do some serious harm; but self-aggrandizing, self-righteous, mean-spirited, empathy-deficient mental health professionals do exist, and the danger of abuse is all too real.
Not all abuse is as dramatic as that depicted in film and theater, but the chronic overuse of attaching scientific-labels and calling them “diagnoses” is itself a form of abuse. Psychological problems, our difficulties-in-living our lives that limit our human potential, are too complex to be reduced to a set of “symptoms,” a shopping list of behavioral symptoms that are very roughly connected to each other to form a modern diagnosis. It becomes all to easy to call someone “a schizophrenic” as though this diagnosis defines who the person is. It becomes all to easy to say that a person “is ADHD” or “has Attention Deficit Disorder” as though this were who the person is, as though this defines the person.
Labels are a double-edged sword. On one level they are simply descriptive words, words that help us communicate about what’s wrong. It is not that these words mean nothing: the are often very evocative. When we say that a person is clinically depressed, we are likely saying something real about the person. But if we stop there, it is as though putting a label on a problem defines the problem.
I have many times heard people, especially parents of troubled children, express how relieved they were to learn that their child was some specific diagnostic category, because it “now all made sense to me.” Now the troubled person or the parent of the troubled person, has a word, a category, a definition, a name to call the problem. It is no longer a problem, it is a “condition.”
And with this “identification of the disorder,” there ensues a terrible loss of responsibility. Terrible because people are nothing without responsibility for themselves. It is responsibility that makes us human rather than automatons. Whatever we do, whatever we feel, that is who we are. If we deny our own responsibility for being who we are, then who are we?
For the record, I’m playing the abusive psychiatrist. (Nuts by Tom Topor; Vermont Theater Company; Hooker-Dunham Theater, Brattleboro, VT; January 24, 25, 26, 30, 31, and February 1 and 2; Fridays/Saturdays 7:30; Sundays 3PM)
NYT Sunday Crossword Hints – Jan. 12, 2014 – It’s Only “A” Game
It seems like every Sunday these days we get a theme that’s very clever from the constructor’s point of view, but not very exciting from the solver’s perspective. Oh, well. As always, pay close attention to the title. Solve one of the starred answers (by doing lots of the crossing clues if you need to). Once you’ve got one, look at the title again and see how it relates to the correct answer. That should help solving the others. There’s a little of what I’d call “misdirection” in the starred clues, making you wonder, for example, if they are all anagrams or something like that. There is some word play within the clue/answer combos, but not a consistent specific pattern. I suspect the author of the puzzle might have been starting out going for something in addition to his “A” game theme.
Some specific hints”
Down:
6. Modernist Kafka: the “modernist” label threw me off. This guy was “modern” a long time ago.
7. A bridge might have one: Some bridges have lots of these. The GWB famously had theirs reduced for revenge recently.
8. Lord of the rings villain: “Villain”? Enemy, sure. Ugly. Yeh!
11. Designer McCartney: Or: Stanley Kowalski’s wife
48. Something woeful: 2 words
Across:
71. Chip on one’s shoulder, say: the clue should probably have identified the answer as slang
80. Stone figures?: Think small, expensive “stones”
83. Louis Armstrong, to friends: I guess those who knew him well didn’t need to use the final MO, no mo’.
86. Houston’s old ______ Field: If you could bilk millions out of your customers, you’d get to name a field after your company too.
91. Prefix with -hedron: No, not TETRA, more obscure. This kind of “hedron” has 20 faces, not that that helps much.
NYT Sunday Crossword Hints – Jan 5, 2014 – Clued In
Nothing very mysterious about the theme this week. Only hint here is to note that the “solution,” i.e. who committed the crime in what place by what means, is to be figured out in the lower right hand box. Obviously, it’s a bit help if remember a little bit of the board game “Clue.” Otherwise it’s just a matter of filling in enough of the crossing clues to figure it out.
Here are a few hints to specific clues:
Across clues:
21. What you can bring up: 2 words; one of the two is an article.
27. Part of Caesar’s boast: And what did he see?
31. Textile tool: well, you wouldn’t want your rug to be all bumpy, would you?
btw: Once you get 42-across, if you didn’t know it before, make a note of it; this is a very common xword clue
67. Bloody Mary stirrer: Picture a Bloody Mary: What do you see that you could stir it with? What a great drink: all your vegetable needs and sobriety-relief in a convenient package.
94. Opening for a dermatologist: Not a prefix, as you might think; think literally
Down:
80. Cartoony clubs: Well, old comic strips and early cartoons, mostly. The club here is the kind of thing you could use as a 1-across, not an organization.
82. “Uh, definitely.” How many times do I have to say it? Twice, apparently.
86. E-commerce site: Nope, not EBAY, but close
75. Captain’s last order: Do they really still go down with the boat? I don’t think so.
76. “Gay” city: Yeh, sometimes this word doesn’t tell you about sexual orientation.
83. “Brave New World” drug: There’s a muscle relaxant that’s called this also. Enough, time to let relax and let my pod take over…
Mis-governance
It is painful to me to see how badly our government functions. On every level of governance, from the White House to the local school board, self-aggrandizement. posturing, and mean-spiritedness dominate the “process,” contaminate it.
The dreams of my youth, dreams of a society characterized by cooperation, by a mutual recognition of each other’s needs, seem oh, so terribly far away.
We have revolutions of technology, but so little of the mind, the heart and the soul. So little progress in how we treat each other, how much respect we have for the other’s feelings.
NYT Sunday Crossword Hints – Dec. 29 – Take a break.
Theme hints: Today’s puzzle’s theme works differently from most. This time, the title’s meaning becomes obvious mostly after finding the “trick” that holds the puzzle together, so it isn’t a big help in discovering what’s happening. The unusual shape of the puzzle is meaningful. The circles in the squares are, like the title, a nice touch, but unlikely to “unlock” the theme for most solvers. The other thing that’s unusual is that the long answers, like the title and the circles are more of an afterthought, a nice tie-in to the theme, but not crucial to solving the puzzle. Without giving the answer away completely, my suggestion is to look carefully at 106-Down and 103-Across. Once you figure out what’s going on there, the theme will reveal itself to you in a way that will be a big help in solving the rest of the puzzle.
A few specific non-theme hints:
6-Across Fixes keys: “Fixes” is a little misleading. Think piano.
18-Across Brother of Prometheus: While poor Prometheus was chained to his rock, his brother was certainly holding up his share of the bargain!
45-Across Bee product: Forget about insects or spelling contests, there’s another kind of bee bee-ing clued here.
109-Down Corner piece: Think game, not furniture
65-Down Tries: 4 words
67-Down Pressing needs?: Think gym, not laundry
69-Down Unlike eagles: Think sports; Is this the opposite of how you feel after you ate too much Xmas dinner?
73-Down Next-t0-last Beatles hit: They followed their own instructions (the title of this song) shortly thereafter.
NYT Sunday Crossword Hints – Dec. 22 – Good One!
Theme: Straight-forward, as long as you’re doing it on paper! You just have to do what the “instruction” tells you. It can be done without the drawing. Once you get enough crossing answers, you’ll get one of the long downs. Basically the drawing is something that’s pretty familiar this time of year. But it’s a word that can be used in many different contexts, and each long down answer is that clue in another totally different context. One more little hint: You may begin to think that 14-down is an individual’s name. It isn’t.
It’s late, my family’s here for Xmas, so I’m skipping the individual clues today. Sorry. Maybe I’ll catch up on them later in the week…
Snowdrops
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NYT Sunday Crossword Hints – Dec 15 – A cut above the rest
Another novel theme this week. I must admit I nearly completed the whole grid before “getting” what was going on. I found it worth the trouble. So this, for most solvers, one of those puzzles where you’ll fill in most of the non-theme answers and even solve some of the long answers with [see above] in them without necessarily getting the theme itself. Basic hint: Keep re-reading the title and put it together with what’s in the brackets. Second hint: Something funny is going on with several short answers that are not exactly theme answers (they aren’t the long down clues that say [see above] and the funny thing that’s happening is not a rebus.
Specific non-theme hints:
61-Down Parting word: Or: greeting word.
62-Down Taunting figure: Especially if you’re huge and not known for your intelligence.
121-Across Scale unit: Or: _______ of protection
90-Down Per: I wanted “A POP.” Close…same idea
95-Down Her name is Norwegian for “beautiful woman who leads to victory.”: Unfortunately, perhaps because she’s Norwegian, many complain that she doesn’t understand English very well!
67-Down NBA Hall-of-famer Thomas: He’s also quite famous for how his name isn’t quite spelled like the biblical character.
87-Across Angelicas and others: Well, HUSTONS doesn’t fit. This angelica has cures ones ills in a different way.
NYT Sunday Crossword Hints – Dec. 8, 2013 Two Outs
Interesting theme this week. Falls into the category that getting the idea of the theme early is a big help to solving the puzzle. Obviously something is happening with the circles. But it isn’t that you put the letters in the circle together in some way. No quite the opposite. The “Two” in two outs doesn’t just refer to the fact that there are two circles. It’s also that there are really two answers in one!
Specifici clue hints:
2. Down – Relative of S.O.S.: Thin kitchen, not the Titanic.
6. Down – Thick bunch?: Duh, who dey talkin’ about?
52. Down – With a will: Oh, I thought this meant being a male
74-Down – Elephant’s opposite, symbolically: No, not a mouse. Pay attention to that word “symbolically.” Some would say both these animals are going nowhere.
76-Down – URL component. No, not org or com or edu, but you’re literally very close to the answer
10-Across – Spring for a vacation: Well, the clue’s a little misleading. I guess this sort of place used to have actual springs (wet ones) but not so much nowadays.
72-Across – In a kooky manner: Think Marx brothers
62-Across- Mix in a tank: A noun, not a verb; Think car, not aquarium
122-Across – “Don’t be a spoilsport”: There’d be an apostrophe in the answer if you wrote it.
42- and 89- Across(es) Blue expanse(s) : A very likely pairing of answers. Think literally.
NYT Sunday Crossword Hints – Dec. 1 – Two Halves in One
Theme hint: Usually the theme, once you get the hang of it, is a big help solving the puzzle. This time I had to go a long way before the theme became clear. The title, usually a big help to figure out the theme, didn’t help much. The first thing to be aware of is that 27-Across and 95-Across are both “key” clues, meaning that they give a hint at what’s going on with the theme. If you can get either of those by the down clue/answers that cross them, especially 95-Across, it can unlock the mystery of the theme. The other thing to notice is all the clues that are just dashes. Sometimes this just means “un-clued” (this was true a couple weeks ago) but that’s not really the case here. Meanwhile, solve away at the non-theme answers. Remember my hint that, if an answer doesn’t fit, it’s probably a rebus — well, forget that hint this time! One more thing, the normal rule that a long answer = theme answer also doesn’t hold true here.
Specific hints:
79-Across – Ocean menace: Not an ORCA this time, though probably orcas and these guys get together at thanksgiving! Just be sure that you’re not the main dish!
109-Across – Not a reduction, abbr.: Think photograph
78-Across – Eponym of Warsaw’s airport: Know your Poles? Hum a few bars and the name of the person who gave his name to this airport might come to you.
65-Down – Go pfft, with “out”: Well, I wanted CRAP (out) but that didn’t work. Think car engine.
61-Down – It’s caught by a stick on a field: Well, not really the stick, but something that’s stuck to the stick
83-Down – Bishop’s place: Think Holy See, not chessboard
67-Across – Met one’s potential: Especially true if you happen to be a flower.
35-Down – Amphibious rodent: I had no idea there were varieties of these varmints that were amphibious. Ick, yuck, or, the answer to 19-Across (which could almost be a direction on a compass, btw)
NYT Sunday Crossword Hints – Nov. 23, 2013 – Hits and Ms.es
Theme hint: Even without the title, the clues to the long answers tell us that we’re looking for some well known people’s names to show up in the puzzle. But don’t ignore the “Hits” part of the title. Once you get one, you’ll quickly see what holds the puzzle together. Keep in mind that the clue is literally true, but the answer will be something that’ll probably be pretty familiar. It helps to be a little older to do this puzzle, ’cause most of the theme references are from “back in the day.”
Specific clue hints:
53-Down. Kind of cat: There’s just no end to this one!
90-Across. Classical “You too?”: The guy saying this wasn’t just complaining about a minor problem.
71-Down. Botanist’s microscopic study: 2 words; not fancy scientific words
9-Down. Cuffed: Not as in handcuffs; bible-language, not ordinary speech
68-Down Egg choice: Think big
83-Across Barbecue needs: The clue should really have a “perhaps” at the end, ’cause a lot of folks bbq without these
54-Down Away for a while: e.g. from the army or from a job
15.Down Bread flavorer: Think of after the bread is cooked rather than before
39-Down Cause of yawning: Or of existential angst
75-Down Cutthroat: 3 equal length words
NYT Sunday Crossword Hints – Nov. 17, 2013 – Vowel Play
Well, the theme isn’t particularly challenging this week and is helpful once you get it. As usual, do a reasonable amount of filling in non-theme answers and the theme will begin to come into focus. The title is quite literally what’s going on. The order of the theme-based letters does vary from theme answer to theme answer, but otherwise it’s pretty straightforward. Not particularly awesome, but, oh well.
38-Down, though long, is not connected to the theme (and, by the way, it really should have a question mark at the end to show it’s a bit of word play).
Specific hints:
25-Across – Spin, of a sort: Think politics, not orbs
33-Across – Having failed to ante up, say: 3 words
34-Across – Italian tourist destination in the Mediterranean: not so popular with a particular Frenchman
46-Across – Medium for body art: One less letter than a TATTOO and a lot easier to remove!
63-Across – Post production locale?: Note the question mark. Remember that the first work of a clue could be a word that’s capitalized even when it isn’t the first word of a clue
58-Doan – Got back to, in a way: There’d be an apostrophe in this if you could put one in a crossword
107-Across – American alternative: Don’t think airline or country
94-Down – History or biography: or film noir
8-Down – ” …___ quit” : Only 3 letters, but 2 words
76-Down – “Almighty” item, abbr.: Well, it ain’t gonna be so almighty very long if our government keeps playing brinkmanship!
NYT Sunday Crossword Hints – Nov 10 2013 – Bye-Lines
Sometimes you don’t get the theme at all ’til after you’ve solved the whole puzzle…and sometimes you need to get the theme early to have much of chance with the puzzle. This is one where the sooner you get the idea of the theme, the better off you are. So, let’s look at the theme: “Bye-Lines” Keep that in mind and do as much of the crossing down answers (all the theme answers are across this time; not always the case) as you can. Do you see any familiar words appearing that are, in some way related to the clue for the long answer? They are all related in the same way and this is not a normal clue/answer relationship. No question mark at the end, so not puns or fancy word play. Something very specific is going on here. The only one that’s “tricky” is 64-Across (Porky Pig), and it’s just like he says it.
Some specific hints:
1-Down Downhill run: do think skiing, though not necessarily through those flags they set up to see if they can kill the skiers.
1-Across Former Belgian national airline: The name sounds like a famous Audrey Hepburn role
38-Down Jesse and Leo of TV sitcoms: Sam’s one of these, too.
43-Down Onward: Or Sally ______.
76-Down Lace’s End: A common crossword puzzle word that no one ever uses. Could it be a very small Texan steer?
106-Down Preceder of “di” or “da” in a Beatles song: You might think there should be one more “o” in this answer
32-Across Base, e.g. & 57-Down Base: Usually matching clues like this involve completely different meanings of the same word, but not this time.
9-Down Nickname for Huntington Beach, Calif. A likely name for a beach in California; 2 words.
Enjoy my hints? Check out my blook (blog + book = blook).
Wigged out
Probably the most frequent question I got after playing Madame in VTC’s production of Jean Genet’s The Maid, was why I didn’t wear a wig. The early publicity photos showed me with a frumpy blond wig that we ditched at a dress rehearsal, instead opting for my bald head in all its glory.
Whether we fully succeeded or not isn’t for me to say, but what we were going for was a Madame who clearly a male playing a woman, but not pretending to be a woman. We thus presented three very different sexual images on stage: Claire as an attractive female female, Solange as a male transformed into a female, and Madame as a male woman.
Madame, as I played her, is not a transvestite in the popular understanding of that word. No one, not even for a moment, would wonder if I were really a man or a woman. You wouldn’t need to look at my Adam’s apple. Nor, again at least what we were trying for, would it be a wolf-in-grandma’s clothes or J. Edgar Hoover in a dress kind of fake. It was just a direct man playing out this bizarre woman’s role. She had to come through for herself. And the man in Madame as himself.
Playing absurd theater — my personal favorite genre — means bringing forward extreme contrasts. The audience is confronted repeatedly by jarring contradictions. But it is these very contradictions that make absurd theater emotionally real, psychologically accurate. Real life is full, for example, of words of hate spoken as though they were love. Disgust and desire, hope and despair, fear and fearlessness do not exist in separate universes, but mingle and intertwine. Our rage at ourselves turns outwards and our rage at others turns inwards. Our desire to show ourselves honestly and our desire to hide everything beneath an impenetrable facade co-exist.
So I/we chose Madame to be strong and vulnerable, determined and utterly dependent, cruel master and, at the same time, victim of the same system that enslaves her maids. Addicted to her clothes and to her domination, she has lost her humanity yet is all the more human, even if a rather despicable human.
Oh, what fun! Fun, because Madame is also a laughable exaggeration of a “woman of society.” I consider myself truly blessed to have a had a chance to stand on the “catwalk” the set designer built into the cave known as the Hooker-Dunham Theater and declare, gesturing wildly with my French manicured nails, how “Outrageously happy!” I was because my lover’s imprisonment had “only made me aware of my attachment to him.” And equally happy that I managed to clomp my way off that platform without breaking my goddamn neck!
