Shame and the psychiatrist’s couch

Sep 17, 2008 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

There are two columns over the past three days that have queried the state of my mental stability. That perception should not be taken seriously because one is written by a washed-up, failed politician who is looking towards his former enemies on Robb Street for a surviving hand; the other by an anonymous writer. The first is Ravi Dev (KN, Sep. 14), the latter, one of the Peeping Toms (KN, Sep 16).

Mr. Dev goes further and does a comical essay on what is shame, meaning that shame has distorted my conceptualization of things in this country.

He uses the word shame because I wrote that after the results of the 2006 election results I was ashamed to be an East Indian because unlike the Africans that gave the AFC six seats, the East Indians stood with the PPP.

I stand by my assertion and I do so unapologetically Mr. Dev also suggested that I see a psychiatrist. Let’s deal with the feeling of shame first, then, we will go to who is insane and who should see a psychiatrist.

Freudian influences exist in people without them being conscious of it. So there are times when they write about an instinct or habit of others when deep down in your mind, you are writing about yourself. The Freudian drive is at work.

It was the editor of this newspaper. Adam Harris, who subtly hinted in one of his columns that the over-zealous anti-homosexual ranting by the singer Bounty Killer may be a way of hiding something about the singer himself.

We can apply the copious definition of shame that Dev produced in his Sunday column to Dev himself. What Dev left out in his treatment of what is shame is the reason why he sued Donald Ramotar for libel. It was based on something that Ramotar told a public meeting Dev is ashamed about.

I cannot write on the specific thing but after the case is heard in court, whether Dev wins or loses, I will do an essay on what shame means.

Before I touch on who should see a psychiatrist, let me unambiguously state that I have no shame of who I am, what I have done in my life, how my politics have turned out and the contents of my analyses. I have no shame about my sartorial choices, my dark complexion, my height.

Most of all, I have no shame about how I wear my hair. Should I go bald, I will not seek medical operation to plant hair on my head. I have no interest in such vanities.

Who should see a psychiatrist? Well let the Guyanese population decide. I have been married to the same woman for thirty years, raised a nineteen-year-old daughter who is a university student in chemistry, held down the same occupation for twenty-three years. I have never struck anyone or any object while driving for all the years I have owned a car.

I never drank any kind of alcohol, never smoked and do not club and party. I never swore loyalty to another country, serving Guyana, only apart from a short stint in Grenada which is our neighbour.

I share a close friendship with some of my fellow Guyanese who have contributed immensely to the freedoms we have enjoyed in this country. Does such a person qualify to see a psychiatrist?

I forgot to mention two things. I have never peeped at any public figure and ‘badmouth’ them while hiding under my mother’s dress. The people who need to see a psychiatrist are such persons.

And secondly, while others were pursuing vanities in the US, I had to be content with two hundred dollars a week from Father Malcolm Rodrigues as strike relief while my wife was pregnant with our daughter.

It seems to my mind that there are some people who really need not only to see the psychiatrist but seek the counsel of those who specialize in moral education Mr. Dev concludes his assessment of me by writing; “Individuals who may know Mr. Kissoon…should suggest to him whether or not he ought to visit (psychiatrist) Dr. Bhiro Harry…”

After reading Dev’s columns those who knew me called me to tell me that I should respond to Dev and ask him if he doesn’t have the same suggestion for himself, especially in the light of the humiliating, ignominious end to his political career in Guyana.

My friends told me that any politician who has been contemptuously rejected by his own people should not only seek the help of a psychiatrist but that of a priest.

One is to preserve the politician’s mind; the other to save his battered soul. Mr. Dev needs to return to little Berbice in New York

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Shame and the psychiatrist’s couch

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