H. Steven Moffic, MD

“Love and work are the cornerstones of our civilization.” This quote, rightly or wrongly attributed to Freud, simply and succinctly indicates the importance of the “Occupy Wall Street” movement.

With all the justifiable concerns about our next DSM, I frankly have more concerns about treatment. After all, diagnosing is really most important as far as it leads to the necessary treatment to help the patient.

Although his plays are suffused with dynastic and generational issues, Shakespeare hardly wrote anything about grandparents per se.

Many will recall “The Decade of the Brain,” when President George H.W. Bush declared that the 1990s would be dedicated to research on neuroscience. If there were landmark findings from that decade, I’m not sure what they were.

I just attended the 40th year reunion of my medical school class at Yale. As is common at these 5-year reunions, we compare our careers and the progress of medicine, although this time more of the focus seemed to be on our personal lives and our new Medicare cards.

The challenge to learn enough relevant information about a patient in brief medication (and evaluative) sessions still exists. And there is also the challenge of picking a medication that will be acceptable and valued-both from a symbolic and biological standpoint.

If Blake were alive today, maybe he’d start one of his famous stanzas with something like, “To see meaning in a 15-minute med check…” If not, I will. Here’s how I’ve come to justify this.

In addition to receiving birthday cards, on this birthday, one of our bloggers, Dr. Moffic, decided to send out a card to all those he loved. It is being reprinted here. "If you are what you love, There is no longer reason to be most modest, so step aside Muhammad Ali, for I Am The Greatest!"

See if you can tell if the following quote comes from religious wisdom or a CBT therapist: “To defeat depression, you must introduce a fresh perspective to your thinking. You must begin to replace troubling, destructive thoughts with positive, constructive ones.” To this, we say, “Amen.”

When my clinic manager told me that prison may be the best place to practice psychiatry nowadays, I didn’t believe him. After all, prisons often seem like a world apart, often in isolated rural areas or in windowless, nondescript urban buildings.

On April 1, a secret source let me in on a special addition to the new “Obamacare” healthcare reform law, which just had its 1-year anniversary. It will be released by the new Convocation speaker at the upcoming annual American Psychiatric Association (APA) meeting in May.

Watson, as many will know, is not necessarily the name of a human, though the Watson of DNA fame may come to mind. Rather, in this context I am referring to IBM's artificial intelligence computer system.

A reporter asked, "Can you do psychotherapy in a cage"? What immediately came to mind was the sociopathic psychiatrist Hannibal Lecter in the movie Silence of the Lambs.

Sometimes, when I recommend an antidepressant, patients will ask if it will make them happy. No, I usually eventually answer. I try to gently and empathically point out that what we have are called antidepressants. They are not called happy pills for a good reason.

We've just had Thanksgiving and I have been in a most thankful mood. I'm still feeling that way after returning to work--and even after an email from a colleague reminded me of one of the many problems facing our field.

Would you be surprised to find out that Freud is gaining a foothold in China? As psychoanalysis and related therapies are slipping in the USA, psychoanalysts from the US are beginning to train a cadre of interested clinicians in China.

The preface explains why Prime Time is so needed. It provides a refreshing, nonjudgmental summary of how and why we’ve arrived at the 20-minute hour. This is important for disgruntled clinicians from the “good old days” as well as for early-career clinicians who have not learned anything better.

For some, creating art may be a displacement of issues and conflicts that we encounter in our work and personal lives. It can express things that can't be formulated in verbal content, as has been shown in art therapy with patients.

Just imagine. If you are not a transgender individual, what must it feel like to always think, as far back as you may remember, that you should have the body of the opposite gender? That you were “born in the wrong body”.

It is easy to claim the presumed high ethical ground when one is not involved in the real life situation at hand. It is also easy to project and proclaim strong positions in order to cover our own inadequacies and anxiety.

It is probably self-evident that to be a celebrity doctor requires at the minimum certain characteristics. The doctor needs to be comfortable being an authority figure and, at the same time, convey humanistic concerns. Being telegenic helps if you are on television a lot.

A quarter of a century ago, E. Mansell Pattison provided the invocation for the opening of the 1985 annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association. It was called “A Prayer for Psychiatrists” and was so well received, that it was reprinted in [Pastoral Psychology (1987;35:187-188,), a now defunct journal. Dr Pattison, both a psychiatrist and a minister, died shortly thereafter, in 1989.

Today, May 5, I'll be turning 64. Normally, that would not seem to be a birthday of particular distinction. Why is it for me?

My first exposure to electronic medical records (EMRs) was when I saw my own primary care physician about 3 years ago. I didn't like it. Neither did he. For me, it seemed like he had to pay as much attention to the computer as to me. We spent less time talking. He laughed as he typed, joking that once everything was in the computer, it should save time and make for better care. I responded that we heard the same promise with managed care.

“I just threw him in the lake and expected him to die. . . My only regret is that he lived.”

I have been a member of our American Psychiatric Association (APA) for over 30 years. I've also been a Fellow for many years, served on the Assembly 3 different times, served on the Managed Care Committee twice, and was once asked if I would consider running for President. On the other hand, I did resign from a request to run for District Branch President because of some unexpected (and what I and some others thought was unethical) collegial conflict.

Posted on February 3, I asked the question, CAUTION! Who Should Be the DSM5 Diagnostician? I suggested that we needed to pay as much attention to who would be designated as the diagnostician as on the revised diagnostic criteria.

It‘s not often that a writer gets such unexpected, and-I‘m quite sure-unintended credibility for an article. Whether by serendipity, synchronicity, or the collective unconscious, that seemed to occur with my January 6 Psychiatric Times blog on “Why Psychiatrists Should Go Green.”

“The proper use of these criteria requires specialized clinical training that provides both a body of knowledge and clinical skills.” How many of us psychiatrists recognize this statement? Or, is it like the fine print that we often gloss over in our everyday contracts and hope it doesn’t cause us trouble at some later time?

I don’t know how many psychiatrists paid much attention to the climate-change conference in Copenhagen last month, but I came away convinced they need our help. Here’s why.