“Thank you.”
“I have to tell you…when I saw your picture, the one you sent me, I could see that the light had returned to your eyes. Tell me: are you seeing anyone?”
“Seeing anyone?”
“Don’t play coy. Are you in love?”
“No.”
“Tell me you’re at least dating.”
“A bit. Not much. Not really.”
“Why not?”
“Well, I tried, but the men always ask me about my life.”
“Yes, I imagine they would.”
“I never know what to say. Talking about the therapy never really works; not talking about it leaves a black hole in the conversation, like I’m on a job interview and the employer can’t help but notice a six-year gap on my resume. I just mention the word ‘cult’ and I sound like one of the Mansons.”
“You use the word ‘cult’?”
“I mention that I was in a therapeutic cult, yes.”
“Well, just an idea, but you might want to skip that part. For starters. Leave it for later, you know, date number three, maybe?”
“Sometimes I wish my life were a bit less complicated. You know: ‘I grew up wanting to be a teacher so when I was eighteen I went to university and then I graduated and I got a job and a mortgage and a house and maybe a dog and I fell in and out of love a few dozen times until I found the right one and now here I am.’ Wouldn’t that be nice?”
“Sounds boring. But it’s nice to see you laugh. I don’t think I ever saw you laugh when you were in the Styx.”
“Probably because I didn’t. Laughing wasn’t in the charter.”
“I have to tell you—reading your letter was disturbing. It disturbed me.”
“Which part?”
“All of it. The outcome of your therapy. Alfonzo. You know I still feel affection for him; you know that, right?”
“I thought so.”
“He taught me everything I know about attachment theory and childhood trauma. He was an outstanding mentor: compassionate, courageous, brilliant. Arrogant. He wanted to control everyone and everything around him, and I know he hurt a lot of people in the process—people I loved, including you. You know we worked together, that I was his surrogate mother?”
“We talked about it at the Styx,” I replied, “and the fact that he was ‘nearing the big one.’ No one really knew what it meant, but we knew he was working with you. Did he inject himself with ketamine, too?”
“Never in front of me, but after a while, yeah, I figured he was taking some kind of drug. It was obvious.”
“How so?”
“I could hear him in the next office with Yvette, the two of them whispering, and then he’d come stumbling in. It didn’t take me long to figure it out. I was one of the ones who wasn’t supposed to know. There were secrets from me about everything.”
“Why would he keep secrets from you?”
“Because. I wasn’t one of the ‘chosen.’ I told Yvette, you know, before I left, I told her that I thought the only kind of person who could work as one of his mothers was someone who wanted to become part of ‘the family.’ It was just too weird otherwise. By the time I figured out he was injecting all my patients with ketamine—secretly—he tried to explain that I hadn’t been told because he wanted to do a study comparing those who received the drug to those who didn’t. I was supposed to be part of that study.”
“How did that make you feel?”
“Outraged. Betrayed. Confused. I talked to my husband about it. I told him that the ethical approach would’ve been to invite me to be part of the study, to tell me that some of my clients would be injected prior to our sessions. But…by then I’d already resigned, so I didn’t say a word. I regret that now. Maybe I always will.”
“It’s weird to hear you talk about your husband. You have a life, don’t you? You’re a real live person.”
She laughed. While I’d always known she was married, that she had her own child, a daughter, we’d never discussed it while I was in therapy. Even at the Styx, we didn’t like to think about the fact that our “Mommy” wasn’t our real mother.
“How much of my treatment were you aware of?”
“I knew that you were trying to change your sexuality, that he was prescribing all that medication, trying to kill your sex drive, make you straight. I remember you lying in my arms once, exhausted. It was probably after one of your primals. You told me that you were carrying around that vial, the little film container. I was speechless.”
“Did you say anything to me? When I was in your arms…”
“I told you that if it turned out you really were gay, well…I’d love you just the same. It didn’t matter to me. I didn’t know what else to say.”
“What did I say?”
“You were threatened. Part of me wanted to steal you away: from him, from the Styx. But…I learned early on never to challenge him. Alfonzo was not the sort of person who invited a collaborative approach.”
“Did he ever yell at you?”
“Alfonzo yelled at everyone. A lot of the time he’d yell at a patient, march out of the room and slam the door, and leave me to pick up the pieces. It happened all the time. I got used to it. Funny what we get used to, numb ourselves to. Or else change. Pick up the pieces and move on. It’s no excuse, but there it is. Everyone could see what was happening to you.”
“To me?”
“To all of you. Other patients talked, you know, how it seemed like you were all members of a cult. The fact that you were all denied a past life, family and friends were excluded from your lives. You could go to work, but you couldn’t take a holiday. Even a course had to be approved. The way you were discouraged from talking to anyone outside of therapy, the house, even to me. I stopped by for a visit once, do you remember? You told me I wasn’t allowed to just drop by ‘unannounced.’”
“I did?”
“Actually, I think it was Clay. But you were there. You all had this blind loyalty toward Alfonzo—‘the cause,’ that’s what the others called it. I asked one of you once, Clay, I think—I asked him if the doctor was paying you to cook his meals and deliver them to his house. He just stared at me. ‘We’re doing it for Papa,’ he said. You were making progress in your therapy, I mean, I could see that, but at what price? Therapy isn’t supposed to take the place of living.”
Talking to Alice was validating, but I’d had enough.
“I wonder if he ever imagined that we would still be friends, years later,” I said.
“I doubt it.”
“We must have some sort of karma going on, you and I. Don’t you think?”
She took my hand. “I do,” she said.
“I hope I don’t still look like your ex.”
We laughed.
|||||||||||
In July 1998, fourteen months after submitting my complaint, I was at my government job, typing up minutes from a meeting, when the couriered package arrived from the College. I slipped the documents beneath a pile of work-related papers and began reading through the 40-page summary of Alfonzo’s 500-page response.
As Albert mentioned, Alfonzo had categorically denied all my allegations, including inappropriate conduct, comments, billing, involvement of patients in his personal life, breach of confidentiality, double prescribing, establishing a cult atmosphere, not obtaining appropriate consent, and providing medical care and advice to “a homosexual patient for his homosexuality.”
With regards to my sexuality, specifically, Alfonzo’s position was that my therapy had not related to my homosexuality and that he therefore did not try to change my sexual orientation from homosexual to heterosexual. He referred to me as being “ambivalent” toward my sexual orientation and sexual practices, and that his “considerable empathy and concerns” related to the effect of those practices on my lifestyle and psychiatric status.
Alfonzo went on to quote several of my primal sessions in which I screamed about wanting to “kill my parents,” about how much I “hated gay sex,” t
hat I knew I was “not a homosexual,” and that he, Dr. Alfonzo, was “the only person alive who could help me reclaim my true identity.” I was now blaming him for my own feelings of homophobia, he wrote, when in truth it was actually he who had supported me emotionally in trying to find a healthy relationship with another man. Strangely, several pages later, he referred to his current hope that I was now “living with a nice lady.”
Halfway through his report, he responded to my claim that he had told me his father had died in the Spanish Civil War—that his father had been a writer of a small Spanish newspaper, a dissident who opposed Francisco Franco’s totalitarian regime, and that in the middle of one night from his childhood, a night that had haunted him for the rest of his life, his father had been taken from their home, lined up outside along with all the other dissidents, and shot. Now, in his report, Alfonzo said that none of this was true: His father had never been a writer; had not died in war; that he had, in fact, lived a long and unremarkable life, dying only recently, an old man, in a small Spanish fishing village.
I met the attorney, Ms. Pearson, for the College of Physicians and Surgeons in September 1998. The office building, situated on a side street in a well-to-do neighborhood, was a two-story relic from the late-1960s covered in bottle-dash stucco. Within minutes of arriving a stylishly dressed woman, like a blond prima ballerina, approached from a long corridor behind the front reception. Our eyes locked.
“Mr. Gajdics,” she said, somehow knowing to pronounce my name correctly, “Guy-ditch.” Smiling, she extended her hand to shake mine. “Thank you for coming in today…”
She led me back down the corridor and into a large boardroom, where she introduced me to her colleague, Mr. O’Donnell. The three of us took a seat at one end of a mahogany table around which must have been more than thirty high-back leather chairs.
“Before proceeding with the expert’s evaluation,” she began, “we would be interested to hear your general thoughts about Dr. Alfonzo’s response.”
“My general thoughts? His report was like reading a fictionalized account of the last six years of my life. Not only did he deny all my allegations, he also created a persona of a doctor that treated me as he should have. The things he said about encouraging my independence, supporting me in my desire to have a long-term relationship with another man—his interpretation was skewed and revisionist.”
“Is that all?”
“For now.”
“Thank you. As you know, in light of the doctor’s denial of the alleged conduct, we were required to consult the assistance of an independent expert in the field of psychiatry.”
“I understand.”
“I should tell you first that the expert was not in a position to determine what had happened between the doctor and yourself.”
“Okay.”
“However,” she continued, glancing down at her opened file, “he did say that, assuming your allegations are true, ‘Dr. Alfonzo’s behavior has been considered acceptable within the framework of his therapeutic model.’”
She looked up. I was expecting her to say something more, to read something else, but she didn’t.
“I don’t understand.”
“Assuming your allegations are true,” Ms. Pearson repeated, “the doctor’s behavior has been considered acceptable within—”
“I’m sorry,” I interrupted, “I heard what you said. I just don’t understand. How is cooking his meals and delivering them to his home considered ‘acceptable within the framework of his therapeutic model’? Or cleaning his house, or trying to ‘convert’ my sexuality by making me sniff—” I stopped myself, mid-sentence. “Screaming at me, double prescribing medication…injecting us with ketamine…how can any of that be considered ‘acceptable’?”
She did not answer my question, but continued to tell me, by reading from, what the so-called expert told them. “‘There are many types of psychiatric therapies that would involve potential confrontation with a patient, limiting a patient’s activities, and challenging a patient’s sexual orientation.’”
“Okay.”
“That should not be interpreted as a psychiatrist stating that your alleged allegations are acceptable. All it means is that there are various psychiatric theories that could be raised at a disciplinary hearing, and depending upon the evidence accepted by a disciplinary committee, any one of them could be justified.”
“What about his attack on my character? He’s taken isolated incidents from my life, he’s even quoted my primal sessions, all in order to make me out to seem delusional.”
“Mr. Gajdics, I can assure you that in reviewing complaints, the committee is concerned with the conduct of its members and not with the allegations regarding the character of complainants. The committee’s focus will be on the concerns expressed in your initial letter of complaint. They will complete their review at their next meeting of November eighteenth, after which they will report back to you on the outcome of their decision.”
Our meeting was short. When she asked me if I had any other questions, and I didn’t, the three of us left the boardroom together. Mr. O’Donnell walked down the hall ahead of us as I turned to face Ms. Pearson in the doorway.
“I wanted to say,” I began. She looked at me. “I mean, I wanted to ask you…I know we’ve been writing and talking on the phone for over a year, but I was just wondering…I was wondering…if you believe me, if you believe my story.”
“Mr. Gajdics,” she responded, taken aback by my candor, glancing down the hallway toward her colleague as he disappeared around the corner.
“I know you probably aren’t allowed to say…”
“I think…I think that in the months we’ve written and spoken on the phone…you have always presented yourself as a mature, reliable witness—articulate and professional.”
She paused. I smiled and extended my hand for a final shake.
“And I believe you, Peter,” she said, clasping my hand with both of hers. “I believe your story. I believe you.”
|||||||||||
In late September, I interviewed several gay men as part of a sex-research project being conducted through the AIDS organization where I was still employed part-time. Most of the men met me after hours at my downtown office. First names were all I ever knew. I asked them a series of questions about their lives, sexuality, and their coming-out processes, then I let them talk. Some went on for hours. An opportunity to tell someone their story, to be heard, seen, was all that many of the men needed. I listened to them as I’d always wanted, when I was a teenager, someone to listen to me.
One mid-fifties man named Emery, an agoraphobic, asked that I interview him in his home. He lived on the main floor of a wooden three-story walk-up near the outskirts of the city. The long, dimly lit corridor inside his building stunk of cigarettes and fried food. I knocked on Emery’s door, and when he opened it, the first thing I noticed were his eyes, their youthful glint that contrasted against his lined face, like cracks in the earth of his age-toned skin.
He smiled and invited me into his sparsely furnished room, the room of his life, with a single bed pushed up against one wall and a mini-fridge and hot plate on a blue laminate counter against the other. Next to his bed were a stack of yellow milk crates upon which were several paperbacks, a framed, black-and-white photograph, and a nightlight. We took a seat at a small folding table in front of the window, a window that looked out over a parking lot, and began our conversation.
In 1960, when Emery was twenty-five years old, the Canadian Public Service “purged” him from his job for being a “practicing homosexual.” Soon after, his parents sent him to Montreal’s Allan Memorial Institute, the Psychiatric Department of the Royal Victoria Hospital, which had been at the forefront in Canadian psychiatric education and research. Emery spoke openly about his involvement with the Institute, and about its director, Dr. Ewen Cameron, a former head of the World Psychiatric Association, who had been awarded funds from a CIA front organization to conduct
brainwashing experiments on innocent civilians, both Canadian and American.
“Can I ask you a question?” Emery said.
“Of course.”
“You’re gay, right?”
“Yes.”
“And you’re okay with that? With who you are?”
“Now I am.”
“You’re lucky.”
“How so?”
“Growing up in a different time and place the way you have. Back then we were all considered mentally ill. Cameron thought he knew how the human mind was wired and what he needed to do to fix it. He hooked us up to electrodes, gave us drugs like LSD or sleeping pills. Massive electroconvulsive shock treatments, sensory isolation, insulin-induced comas that lasted months on end.”
“Why? What was he trying to do?”
“Wipe our brains clean of all identity, including what he thought was our neurosis. Break us down so that he could build us back up again, his own way. Imprint a new, healthy identity on top of our blank minds. ‘Depatterning’—that’s what he called it. Most of what happened to me personally I only discovered years later, when I finally read my hospital file. I have no real memory of any of it. I don’t know if you can imagine what it’s like to have gaps in your life, years, stolen from you.”
I wanted to tell him that I knew exactly what it was like, but I listened as he continued.
“For months we were in these ‘sleep rooms,’ not just homosexuals but married women, straight men, we were all wearing headphones and listening to taped messages that just went on for hours, sometimes sixteen hours a day, seven days a week. Everyone’s tape was different, depending on your problem. I thought I was a homosexual: that was my illness. Cameron wanted to erase my brain of all association with homosexuality and replace it with my innate heterosexuality. Or so his theory went. Instead we turned into children. Grown men and women: incontinent, with no past life. By the time I got out in sixty-two, I was a shadow of my former self. I couldn’t work. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t process information, make decisions. My entire memory of the fifties and early sixties…of my whole life…it was wiped clean, like off a chalkboard. I had to reconstruct everything, my entire personal history, from pictures, from stories people told me, letters that I wrote or received from family and friends. Everything about my former self was erased. Except for my homosexuality. That much never changed. I was still attracted to men.”
The Inheritance of Shame Page 22
