Circa 1982 I had drawn a picture of Saddam Hussein while I was in the psychiatric hospital. I did it because I wanted to see how far my skills had come. I had copied it from a news magazine. When the therapists saw it, they were aghast that I had become a follower of Hussein. The only thing it showed me, in my mind, was how stupid and provincial were the people who were taking care of me. Fortunately, after some questioning, the doctors saw it for what it was – a drawing taken from an otherwise barren environment.
Similarly for my judge regarding my writing – “A window to the mind!” she declared. “I must protect society!” So, instead of developing skills that would entertain my readers, I stuck closely to factual accounts as I could render them and never tried anything else lest she put me in a maximum-security psychiatric facility for years. So much for First Amendment rights.
Doesn’t a doctor get any say in this? For example, later when we asked for dismissal of the case a few years ago, my doctor wrote a report and submitted it to the court with our request. The judge ignored it and took it upon herself to rule against us – no second opinions from a second doctor.
But there was a time when I was in love with a beautiful woman from Ukraine. She wanted to marry me and have me move to Ukraine with her. She was a successful author there, and on one of her trips back she took me on a Skype tour of her house. Lovely. I told my Probation Officer. His response was that the judge (same one) may not allow me to return to the US. (And see my family, for example. My family was always there in the hard times.) This was too much for me, so I ended my relationship with her.
I am not a criminal. What do we do about this?
David Geiger is a licensed and awarded electrical engineer who spent 7 years in psychiatric hospitals and over 40 years since 1979 in the courts as a result of his schizophrenia.