Life "on the beach"

I have lived most of my life near ocean waters. My sense of discomfort out of sight of ocean waves and fascination with the sea was said by my training psychoanalyst to stem from a first-born's resentment at the arrival of a sibling: "three is company, four is a crowd". It made some sense then, since none of us knew anything about behavior genetics at that time, and his proposal amounted to a good try.

In retrospect, my analyst's interpretation, though correctly identifying part of the source of my yearnings, reflected a limitation common to most psychodynamic therapists to this day: giving too little weight to innate temperamental factors. Increasing studies in behavioral genetics have been demonstrating that certain varieties, or alleles, of genes, are correlated with certain temperaments. For example, a recent study in Finland demonstrated a high correlation between exploratory novelty seeking and the type 4 dopamine receptor gene. This, perhaps in combination with other genes, may contribute to my embrace of the sea as an unlimited source of far horizons. More on that subject later.

My DRD4 allele has also ignited my impatience with confining aspects of my physical and social worlds. As a small boy growing up near the Hudson River in Washington Heights, Manhattan, my mother took me to the riverbank almost daily to watch the excursion steamers, churning upriver against the tide with their twin funnels belching black smoke and walking-beams pumping above their top decks, carry passengers to places like Bear Mountain, Catskill and Albany. We were among the thousands on both banks who witnessed the first cable of the George Washington Bridge towed across the river to Fort Lee, New Jersey. We went several times by steamer to Coney Island, on semi-sheltered Lower New York Bay, and later moved to adjacent Brighton Beach, a block from the sand. As a young man, my father tired of the confining aspects of living in London from which he had bicycled several times to Brighton on the English Channel. He migrated to Toronto, and, before meeting my mother and moving to New York, made seven passages from Montreal to Liverpool to visit his mother.

Another issue involving my long allele arose late in 1959 when I was offered a promotion to be clinical director of the newly-built UCLA Neuropsychiatric Institute, but the department chair would not approve of my proposal to staff the wards in a non-traditional way. At about the same time, I was recruited by LA County to direct a new Department of Mental Health, with close to a carte blanche to innovate in many ways. I jumped at the opportunity, established a central office with many talented staff, arranged to assemble a corps of privately practicing psychiatric, psychological and psychoanalytic mental health consultants with much subsequent positive impact on schoolteachers, welfare caseworkers, probation officers, and other community caregivers, and opened seven regional mental health centers with their own psychiatric emergency teams and community boards, concentrating first on underserved black and Hispanic neighborhoods.

With LA County approaching nine million residents, greater in population than 42 states, our public mental health department became the largest in the country. I left the job after 16 years because contract agencies began to directly lobby my five elected bosses more vigorously, and I didn't want to spend my time and energy defending the program planning that we and our citizen advisory boards were engaged in. They were crowding me! In retrospect, my remaining options were becoming less and less like open horizons, and my allele was crying foul.

Recovering nicely from recent ordeals of surgery and hospitalization, I maintain a limited but interesting private practice, teach UCLA residents and psychoanalytic students at the New Center for Psychoanalysis, attend seminars and confer with graduate students and faculty at Anthropology and Psychology, and do research and writing on developments and ideas that satisfy the novelty-seeking impulsions of my DRD4 allele. At age 83, I enjoy my family and friends as well as frequent contacts with my psychiatric and psychoanalytic colleagues. Rocking chair-type retirement is far from consideration for this old dude.

As a (hopefully compassionate) alpha male, one focus in my life has been on the many changes in mankind's use of power for traveling the globe. There were still some commercial sailing vessels in New York and New England before I was ten. Steam followed, and I was in awe over its raw applications. Then came electricity, diesel power, electronics, nuclear power, and new uses of the wind for power generation - in a sense, coming full circle. My first personal car was a stately used 1933 Buick; now I slither about town in a sleek black hybrid Prius which feels more like sailing than any other car I've driven. The historical Buddha is quoted as having said "life is change". Buddhists will also (paradoxically) agree, as I mentioned above, that plus ca change plus c'est la meme chose.

One last word - I guess I must always have one. You may feel I've gone overboard in my use of nautical metaphors in this little piece of jetsam. It's true that I'm not between the devil and the deep blue sea about using this spyglass for helping me navigate through my life. I do not mean to put out a false beacon to lead you onto the rocks. Square yourself away in your preferred manner. La rue maritime may not be your cup of grog. Clearly, mixing metaphors is mine. It may be less literary, but for some of us it can have an astringent effect on life "on the beach". The sharpening of the senses after days at sea provide a benefit for those who, with or without long DRD4 alleles, are willing to risk blue water passages on able vessels. As an old sailing guy, I wish you:

This metaphor for anticipating the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune is irresistible for me. The tending role of psychoanalytic psychotherapy can enhance our evolved and learned adaptational capabilities. Of course, wind and sea are beyond our control. However, larger blocks (pulleys) and smaller rope are potentially within our reach, psychologically and metaphorically speaking, with skillful professional help if needed.

Being owned by a vessel like the Sea Dragon was not an inexpensive undertaking Those who are drawn to the sea can enjoy it in far less expensive ways: sitting and walking on piers and wet sand, swimming and surfboarding at the beach, renting small sailboats and sea kayaks, traveling on excursion boats to offshore islands are examples. Experiencing life at the margins of a continent can be spiritual in its own unique way.