I got a few little things done now... such as taking a peak at my garden and do a little watering. There don't look to be any new little green caterpillars setting up home on my vegetable leaves, what's left of them. But after uprooting a few that seemed to be in the process of giving up the ghost, I did find that there seemed to be something wrong with the roots, which had a lot of bulges in them. So I think that could be affecting my harvest, and it's probably advisable to just uproot the rest too, knowing that's the case. The Stevia, which was all but enveloped by sprawling suspended vegetable vines seems to be escaping everything unscathed, thankfully. But the boxwood basil is showing signs that I should pick some more leaves that look unhealthy again. I'll do that later today.
I need to open some business mail and deal with that today, take a walk (for exercise) and also try some more to find the MIA articles that are probably somewhere under my nose that will bring on one of those knock-on-the-forehead how-stupid-of-me reactions. Hopefully that will be the case.
In the meantime, however, I'd like to continue with this chapter, especially as it's bringing up some things that might require some continuity of thought on my part.
***
"According to Glass and others, the prevention of psychiatric casualties can be divided into three approaches or levels. 'Primary prevention' consists of attempts to influence living, working, or fighting conditions to minimize the likelihood of disabling maladjustment and is a recognition of various influences upon morale and the experience of combat. 'Secondary prevention' is the early recognition and prompt management of emotional or behavioral problems that some individuals might develop. This is carried out on an out-patient basis, so the individual remains a member of his unit. 'Tertiary prevention' is used for persistent and severe mental disorders that require hospitalization. Here, milieu therapy is the main therapeutic tool. As in secondary prevention, this technique is oriented to rehabilitation back into military duty and the reduction of chronic disability." (p. 161)
These approaches all assume that the desired end is the continuance or return of the the soldier to active duty. Would this apply to Vienna, in particular as regards to how I was treated? It is still not completely clear that my treatment in Vienna was unique, although it certainly was unusual (not common); I was told of 2 other women (wives of workers) who had received similar treatment, but I wasn't there to know the circumstances and the like to make a comparison with them, but it does seem to at least be worth noting that these other earlier cases did exist prior to my coming to Vienna. These 2 women were still there when I was there. But since I wasn't there and can't really speak for what happened regarding them, I'm just going to discuss my case, as I know of no others.
If the Vienna leadership had similar goals vis a vis their approach to dealing with me was similar to how the Army approached apparent mental instability in it's soldiers(that is, to make me a valuable & reliable soldier / missionary according to their specifications) then it might have also used the same step-wise system described in this text, although not necessarily so. But let's just see how my treatment compares to the process described here.
Regarding primary prevention, it is very clear that there was absolutely no attempt at this kind of primary prevention. In fact, my contention has been all along (although I was afraid to say this at the time) that my stressors were contrived and intentional. This begs the question, of course, as to why they would do that, and I only wish I could give you the answer with 100% certainty. But I can't. I do have my suspicions which range from broad intentions they had toward all newcomers to intentions toward me that were very unique. But in any case I am 100% sure that primary prevention was never used in my case.
Moving on to the secondary prevention, as described in this text. This one is a little more ambiguous as far as my personal experience is concerned. The mission leadership, those involved with me, would probably say that they did this, but in my mind they might have gone through the motions of doing this, but what they were doing wasn't rehabilitative in the standard understanding of the term, not like you'd expect from counseling. Rather, it was a kind of counseling that was part counseling, part mentoring, part "discipleship" (in the sense of spiritual growth development), and a very large part socialization. In fact, the other aspects, in my belief, were all guises for socialization, and that's what it was - not counseling.
So now we see that the first level wasn't used, the second was only on a surface level (is it safe to call this manipulative?). But, and I'm dropping a bomb here, the third one was used. What would you think in such a situation? I was shocked and didn't believe it till it was reality.
Why would they do this? What kind of mindset would lead them to treat me like this? How could they use this as socialization, if that's what they were intending? And I'll tell you this, that they didn't get any professional opinion before taking this 3rd step according to the Army system. The details are chilling, but I'm not going to go there now. You'll have to wait till the chronological narration, which won't be too long now.
***
"It was discovered that the 'fixing' of psychiatric symptoms (or their becoming permanent, like an image on a photographic plate) would occur less frequently if the soldier were treated as close as possible to his own unit. This allows other, functioning, soldiers to exert a social control function over the soldier-patient." (p. 162)
This principle was apparently widely recognized because its stated in other articles I have too.
As such, if the leadership wanted to help me recover from what they, as non medical professionals of any kind, had deemed serious enough to hospitalize me for, they should have had me treated nearby, right? Wrong! Well, partially wrong.
What they did was send me back to the States near the U.S. office, where most of the publishing was actually done (not at the Vienna office), and not only that, but they sent me to a hospital where the lead psychiatrists were famous evangelical Christians. If I had opened up and told about the things going on in Vienna, how likely do you think such doctors would believe me over the missionary leadership? Now if I had been sent to just any old hospital I might have been able to open up and have someone believe me... like the psychiatrist in Syracuse in January who asked if my dad was a spy and didn't think I was paranoid either. My chances of that thing were like my chances of sprouting wings tomorrow and flying off to the moon.
So I'll just leave it to your imagination to consider how this all might have affected me. After all, I'm not a rock and no matter how strong I may be I do have a limit. At that point I had several things I had to decide between as to what was the most important:
1) spilling my guts and being determined completely and utterly insane (especially since I couldn't describe things then like I am now years and years later)
2) deciding to reconcile the dissonance I was feeling between what I felt was right and wrong and what I was witnessing and experiencing; which would mean conceding and accepting their values, which would then be internalized and become my new gold standard or rationalization
3)deciding to try to make myself strong in spite of this incredible dissonance which just exploded in size with my being treated that way
4)walking away of my own accord, which would have meant returning home and having to face all my supporters, including giving a reason for my leaving the mission; but who would believe me at that point?
That was it, really, what I faced and what my options were, and I survived and I'm here to tell about it.
There are other principles provided in the text (besides being treated near the unit, but there's not really anything to say about them).
***
In going through the rest of the chapter I don't think I have any other comments to make. So I'm going to take another break to do some other things.
~Meg
