Transvestia

This indeed is a devastating paragraph. I

just love it. Compulsion equals sickness! Obviously the world to Dr. Beigel is nothing but a huge insane asylumn. Every woman who feels the compulsion to go into a store to try on "that" hat in the window would have a rough time under the ministrations of Dr. Beigel. She's got to be sick. Her compulsive behavior tells him so. Sick also would be the woman across the street who simply must pick up every stray cat and dog she finds and sees to it that they get shelter. Also sick, according to Dr. Beigel's yardstick, must be the poet who feels the compulsion to express his feelings in rhymes... and the religious person who feels the inner comp- ulsion to forgive wrongdoers....and the writer who must pour his thoughts onto paper...See how absurd you can get when you base your judgements in wild generalities? The trouble, it seems is that many psychotherapists today seem afflicted by their own peculiar type of compulsion: to see sickness whenever a person's behavior veers from the accepted tenets of conduct set by society. Unconventional behavior, non-conformity, automatically spell sickness, no matter how harmless such behavior may be. I see here an attempt by Dr. Beigel to abandon his role as a psychotherapist and assume that of a moralist. He is perhaps baffled, or even angry, because most TV's do not rush to psychotherapists in search for a cure. Let us quote him again : "The great difficulty in weaning transvestites from their compulsion lies in the weakness of their motivation towards removing this behavior pattern from their lives." Here our friend admits that there is hardly any reason why we should want to be turned into non-TV's We are an army of potential patients who refuse medication. A bunch of "sick" people who actually enjoy being "sick". They blossom, they find peace, relaxation, mental balance, fun, stimulation in their "sickness". Like children they are capable of enjoying hours and hours of the magic of make-believe. What a horrible situation for any psychotherapist! Magic in a society where