Dr. Coughlan,
My name is Jesse Newberg, and I am currently on medical leave from Wesleyan University. I wish to return to the school this semester, but have found this desire to be in conflict with Office of Behavioral Health’s (OBH) demand that I will have (always) already been in treatment during the leave and have had a job. Unfortunately, both of these courses are contrary to a strongly held ethical imperative, that is, I am a Lacanian Communist (LC). Which in some sense is neither here nor there (ni ici ni là là là), considering I must subject myself to the state of the Wesleyan community and its existing bureaucracy, its rules even as they extend beyond the campus. As an LC in a private university I am asked to make specific sacrifices such as formalized papers, the acceptance of hierarchized (dialectical) student-teacher relations—though I do my best to affect the singularity of all who belong to a class without regard to “rights” and generally subsume the meaning our bodies give it! In return I expect that the University treat me justly, with its own justice, whatever arbitrary form that that might take. Here is where I stage my complaint with the school and with you, specifically, as head of the OBH.
Within three hours of my first and only session at the OBH, I was rushed to Middlesex hospital and subsequently placed on the seventh floor with other psychological deviants only to find myself on mandatory medical leave with the aforementioned conditions of return. It was a real panic all around. What to diagnose me with? The first decision Dr. R must have made was that this was hypomania rather than mania because the third category (C.) of the DSM-IV’s classification of Bipolar was not fulfilled. Basically I was reading much, much faster and had finally conquered a tendency I had inherited from my family to be overly judgmental of strangers and was engaging them in significant conversation.
Second, while I was notified that Dr. R wanted to contact my parents because of her grave concern, I was never asked to sign a release and would not have if asked; but mere hours after the session Dr. R contacted my mother, a psychologist, and must have disclosed at least some specifics of the case because as I would later learn my mother actually volunteered information about a supposed family history of bipolar disorder (not something that could have been brought forth if Dr. R had only notified her of a “general concern”). This confirmation I believe solidified the tentative prognosis, but seems from what I have read in the Fall 2002 Wesleyan Parentline in an article entitled “Who’s Watching my Child: Wesleyan Weaves a Safety Net” contrary to the promise that confidentiality will only be breached if the adult-student is “considered a serious threat to himself (sic) or others.” And the only way such immanent danger could have been deduced is from the prognosis of a shaky diagnosis. Nothing I said or did, directly, implied such transgression.
Third, when the van came and Dr. R, the Dean, and head of security came crashing on my door while my friends and I were smoking pot and watching Star Trek, I was told the only reason for my being required to go with them to the hospital was that I needed immediate psychiatric care (drugs) which the OBH facilities did not have. I simply requested that I not be drug tested, that I not spend the night, and that I would see a competent psychiatrist for a thorough evaluation. None of these promises were kept. After waiting for hours with Dr. R, after having exhausted the topic of the secret fourth term of the dialectic, we were told the resident psychiatrist had left until after the weekend. I was then given a ten minute interview with someone who may or may not have had a PhD, sedated, drug tested, and placed in a room with three beds and a very large window, to be monitored for the next three days and nights.
It’s been a year and half now, too late to file a complaint under the Citizens with Disabilities Act, and I am worried that I will be old and bald by the time I return to Wesleyan. I really miss my friends.
Jesse Newberg
Leave a Reply