Healthcare

Milton Friedman is credited with saying, “The most important thing in business is increasing profit and share holder value.” Good one, Milton. You now get a healthcare insurance industry that makes money by collecting huge premiums and then denying coverage when you get sick. Hooray for capitalism! What you also get is one of the richest CEOs in the industry shot in the back and killed on the streets of New York. Then social media explodes with praise for the 26 year-old gunman, Luigi Mangione,  and hatred for the industry.

I’ve had several blog posts about this. Here they are for your enlightenment. Go Milton!

Fred Gilbert, Jr. 

CAUTION

Dear Reader – This blog may be disturbing to some readers.

As a psychologist, I have been fascinated by what happened when psychoanalyst Fritz Perls tried to visit Sigmund Freud in Vienna several years before Freud’s death. Freud refused to see him. Perls maintained anger about that for the rest of his life. There are parallels in how I hold my anger toward my father all the years of my life.

This article is the story of Perl’s struggle and my struggle. It is rough. If raw emotion and full-on profanity upset you, please DO NOT read this article.

I am also concerned about your reaction that might span several responses.

Pathetic. Jesus, Rick, you are 85 years old. Grow up. Get over it.

Shame. How could you treat your father so badly? He suffered through the Great Depression and worked hard to give you a sweet life in the Berkeley Hills. You got nothing to complain about.

Hooray. He had it coming. Wish I’ve told my dad to go fuck himself.

Amazing. You learned from all this and treated your daughter very differently than you were treated.

Anger. You are so right. Hold on to that anger. It can energize everything from creativity to social change…and help us carve out our identity.

So, Dear Reader, it is up to you. Either close up your computer and take the dog for a walk, or dig in to this article.

Sigmund Freud and Fritz Perls

Fred Gilbert, Jr. and Rick Gilbert

I was 55 when my father died. No tears. No loss. I didn’t much care. I have male friends who report that when their fathers died, they were devastated. Nothing like that for me. Why? Because my father was an authoritarian asshole.

550 California Street

My friend George Petty knew a person who worked at 550 California Steet in San Francisco where my father worked. George casually asked, “Did you know Fred Gilbert?” The person looked alarmed. “Yes, why?” George said, “I am good friends with his son.” The person said,  “That guy must be a total psychological train wreck. Fred Gilbert was universally feared and hated.”

Devestations

I have had connections with his son William. He told me his dad showed him the PowerSpeaking newsletters, and would say proudly, “This was one of my students.” After reading my completed dissertation Bob wrote me a letter, the last sentence of which said, “What you may not know Rick, is that I needed you as much as you needed me.”

Re-reading one of my process notes from our consulting on my research (1975), I noted, “Bob told me he was jealous of what I was doing, ‘You get to interview these musicians where they live and work.’”

William told me on the weekends while his dad was fixing his special pancake family breakfasts, he played Miles Davis and Dave Brubeck. Furthermore, William told me that Brubeck was in therapy with his dad. Let me say that again: Bob Suczek (my dissertation coach) was Dave Brubeck’s therapist. JESUS H. CHRIST!

These are people whose loss rips at my heart even today – 50 years later.

Freud and Perls

What the hell does all of this have to do with Sigmund Freud and Fritz Perls? As a young psychoanalyst from South Africa, Perls journeyed to Vienna to meet his hero, Sigmund Freud. The elderly Freud answered the door and said a few cursory things to Perls, but did not invite him in. He then closed the door. Perls was outraged. For the rest of his life he held onto that anger about being rebuffed by his hero.

When Gestalt colleagues said to Perls, “Fritz, you must get beyond all this anger.” Perls said, “Freud is too important to the world and to me. He accomplished so much working with so little in the area of psychological research and tools. He was an amazing human being, and my anger toward him has helped to create and shape who I became. I will never give it up.”

A Life-changing Explosion

We were on the phone one Father’s Day when he began berating me for continuing to study this “psychology bullshit.” He sarcastically questioned why I didn’t get a real job and move on with my life. He said, “Well I’ll tell you this, Mister, if you worked for me, you’d shape up or you’d be outta here.” I blew a gasket. All the anger I had held in since boyhood spewed out like Mt. St. Helens.

It started with a string of profanity unlike anything I had ever unleashed before, or since. Yelling into the phone and kicking furniture around the living room, I blasted away:

Mr. Tough Guy

Oh, Mr. Tough Guy. So, you’re going to fire me huh? Well, I have news for you asshole, you can’t fire me, I quit. How do you like that Mr. Tough Guy? First of all, fuck you. You can kiss my ass, Mr. Tough Guy. You can shrivel up and die alone. You don’t have a son anymore, and I don’t have a father anymore! By the way, take whatever little pissant inheritance you have, roll it up and stick it up your ass. You are all alone you prick. I quit. How do you like that Mr. Tough Guy? Oh, does that piss you off? Does that insult you? Does that hurt your feelings? Do you want to punch me? Do you want to fire me? Have at it motherfucker!

The Authoritarian Personality

Wow. Pathetic. What a shame. A son has to do this to his father?

Studying social psychology I learned about something called “the authoritarian personality.” You know, Hitler, Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Fred Gilbert, Jr.

A Big Disappointment

There is a psychological theory suggesting a young man must “kill” his father in order to move on in life, and become himself. I don’t know if that’s true. But I do know for me to have separation from him was liberating. He didn’t know who I was, and never would. I could never be what he wanted me to be.

Toward the end of his life, I interviewed him once on video. I asked, what disappointments he had in life. He said, “Your mother and I were disappointed in you.” Years later I thought,

Oh really? What did I do to disappoint you? Was I on drugs? Did I hold up liquor stores? Was I on welfare? Was I gay? Did I get some girl pregnant? Did I go to prison? No. What I did was stay in school and get advanced degrees and build a career. What the fuck was wrong with that? I’d guess what really pissed him off: I was not a hard-charging, money-driven salesman. I did not put money ahead of everything else. I did not go into the insurance business. I was not a golf-playing Republican. And, oh, by the way, I marched in the streets protesting the Vietnam war.

Looking back on all of this from my 85th year, there is huge learning. To become fully myself I had to give up all hope of approval from him. I needed to chart my own course, without either his condemnation or his support.

What a mess. What if instead he said, “You know, Rick, your mother and I are so proud of you. You have done well in school and built a satisfying career. Well done.”

Connie Gilbert

Hmmm? How the fuck did that work for you, mom? She also had very little sense of who I was. She also, however, had huge disappointments in her own life. Smart and talented. My father would not let her work, “No wife if mine is ever going to work.” No wonder she was so unhappy. She became a sloppy drunk.

Oh my God, Rick. What are you bitching about? You are 85 years old, you’ve had a great life. Get over it.

Just like Fritz Perls who never gave up his anger toward Freud, my anger toward my father helps me define who I am, and separates me from unrealistic hopes for his approval. I will never give it up. That anger drives my creativity. It also makes it hard to work for a boss.

Reconciliation

By the way, years after that blowup, I reached out to my father hoping for some kind of reconciliation. We did that. From that point until he died, we had a relationship of sorts. It was never satisfying, but at least we talked.

When I saw programs like “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father” or “The Waltons,” or the father-son baseball catch scene in “Field of Dreams,” I start bawling like a baby – you know, not quiet sobbing, but hard crying – tears and snot running down. For all my anger, the real pain is about the lack of approval and love.

Maybe one benefit of all the therapy – I tried not to behave the same way as a parent.

Katy Munger

The story is not over. I look at my daughter, now the age I was when I told my father to go fuck himself,  and hope she does not have to do the same.

The end.

P.S. If your mentors are still alive, please, please reach out to them. Take them to lunch. Wrap them in the warm glow of love and appreciation you have for them. It will mean the world to them, and you can go to your grave knowing you completed the circle of life.

A psychologist friend, Tom Greening, was a huge jazz fan. He especially loved Louis Armstrong. In an article about Armstrong‘s death, Greening said “Armstrong expressed the feelings I couldn’t, and put me in touch with ones I didn’t know I had.”