Dr. Levine was fifty years of age, married with two children. She was full-figured and wore no make-up. There was no shortage of consultative evaluations in this large upper middle class predominantly white teen-age population and this kept her very busy.
Ben showed up on time and sat on the edge of the chair in front of the psychologist’s desk. He glanced at a Ph.D. certificate hanging on the wall, and a picture of Mrs. Levine and her husband and two teen-age children on the corner of her desk. Then he stared at Dr. Levine, noting her staring back at him over her reading glasses. He folded his arms across his chest. She smiled. “I’m glad you could make it. Can you tell me please, what happened between you and your classmate?”
He answered with a stern, unchanged expression on his face, “It’s of no consequence. He’s an ignorant, illiterate asshole.” He uncrossed his arms, sat back in the chair for an instant, then leaned forward, put both elbows on the arms of the chair, put his hands in a prayer position in front of his face and stared at the psychologist over his fingertips.
“I need to understand why you reacted like you did, Ben. How can I understand if you won’t tell me anything?”
With that, he leaped to his feet and walked back and forth in front of his interviewer. “There’s nothing to understand. He’s the one you should be interviewing, not me. I don’t want to waste a single cubic centimeter of oxygen on that cretin.”
Spoken like one with a mathematical and scientific background, she thought. As he continued talking, Dr. Levine said, “Why are you so agitated?”
“Agitated is right. Can I get the hell out of here?”
“Please sit down.”
“I like standing.”
“Don’t you want to talk anymore?”
“You got that right, lady. This is bullshit. I’m going.”
“This is a hell of a way to start an interview,” said Dr. Levine talking Ben’s language as a way of attempting to get some rapport with this agitated teen. She remained calm in the face of Ben’s verbal onslaught. What little she knew from this few minutes of talking to her new client told her there was indeed a problem. She decided not to push this interview further. “You have to be here Friday, you know. Your parents are expecting me to see you more than once,” she said to his back as he turned and left the room.
He did return on Friday, ordered by his father after he received a call from Dr. Levine who was shocked at the difference in her agitated client. She tried not to let her facial expression betray her thoughts. He walked in, hands in his pockets, eyes half closed and head nodded forward. He seemed to be in a dream state, and looked around with quick head movements as if he was reacting to sudden noises or visions. He took a seat, both arms in his lap, palms down. He stared past his interviewer.
“How are you today?” she asked.
“Okay,” he said with no visible lip movement.
“Do you feel all right?”
“Yeah.”
“Have you seen that boy you had the fight with?”
“Yeah.”
“Did anything happen?”
“No.”
Through this brief discussion, his expressionless face remained unchanged. On one occasion he turned his right hand palm up, flexed his fingers, and stared at his fingernails.
“Do you want to tell me anything at all?”
“Nothing to tell,” he said in a monotone.
“Nothing? Did you have any problem with your fellow students this week?”
“No.”
“Are your parents okay?”
“Yeah.”
“Would you tell me about them.”
“None of your business.”
“What do you plan to do with your life after you graduate, Ben?”
“College.”
“Where?”
“Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois.”
“Are you looking forward to it?”
Ben grunted.
“What will you study?”
“Don’t know.”
And so the questions went for another fifteen minutes. He sat the entire time, changing his body position often. Dr. Levine met with him twice more in the next week. Both times, he exhibited a short attention span, answering all questions with as few words as possible and at times interspersed with four-letter words. Complicated as this case was, Mrs. Levine felt that she could now offer some suggestions, so she arranged an appointment with his parents.
CHAPTER 4
Psychological impression:
They arrived in her office after school. The introductions complete, Dr. Levine couldn’t help but notice the resemblance between Ben and his father—the same unsmiling, serious face. “Thank you for coming, Dr. and Mrs. Marzan. I’ve seen your boy and I have some thoughts for you.”
“And what do you think, doctor,” said Hari.
“The times I saw him it was like talking to two different people. He vacillated between agitation and depression. I believe that he has either a bipolar disorder also known as manic depression, or he has an agitated depression. At other times, he seemed to be completely engrossed in another world. This makes me wonder if there was a schizophrenic component to his illness.”
“It sounds confusing, Dr. Levine,” said an alarmed Lois.
“Yes, I agree. Adolescents who develop one of these illnesses show the same depression and withdrawal and sometimes hopelessness as adults do, but they also can show extreme agitation and irritability, or they can demonstrate severe rage, use profanity, and have long lasting tantrums. The good news is that many of these people are highly intelligent, and if they can learn to stabilize their emotions, they can become very valuable citizens. One thing I spotted in your son is that he is a very intelligent youngster, even a genius perhaps. His teachers all said the same thing and had no doubt about his intellectual potential.”
“What should we do?” asked Lois.
“I would first recommend a psychiatrist to confirm one of these diagnoses. Then treatment can start if he or she concurs. It may well be that medication would be helpful. As a psychologist, I can’t prescribe them in this state.”
Hari, who had been slumping in the chair, leaned forwarded stiff-backed and said, “Treatment with medicine?”
The way that he responded told Mrs. Levine that the thought of medicine was anathema to Hari, but she dealt with the problem directly, and in an authoritative a voice as possible, she exclaimed, “Yes. The two mainstays of therapy are medication and psychotherapy. Medicine can deal with the medical aspects of the illness, and psychotherapy, or talk therapy, helps the patients to understand their illness and develop the proper approaches to lessen the effects and reduce the hills and valleys.”
“You say talk therapy?” asked Hari with wide opened eyes and a creased forehead.
“Yes, very important.”
“May I ask a question,