client out of something, they’re usually just sending us people who are pretty obviously disturbed. Also, the mentally ill wind up arrested a lot. Twenty-five percent of inmates meet criteria for a psychotic disorder.”
Another defendant was brought in. He was twenty-six and from the islands. He was big and looked menacing until he sat down and started to cry fat tears like a toddler’s. Dr. Pine and Dr. Wolfe could not establish whether he had a history of psych hospitalizations or had simply been in the hospital for other health problems. The defendant was too confused to be helpful. Not fit. As the guard led him out, I reluctantly got up and excused myself to go back to the hospital. Seminars were starting that week, and though the topics would shift, the timing would not. One month in and my days at forensicswere from then on to be interrupted. The hospital was an hour door-to-door from the court clinic, and the seminars were that long as well, so I’d be missing three hours at my rotation to attend them, which made little sense to me, but it was the schedule I’d been handed. Our first mandatory seminar was on group therapy, and at least it was a modality close to my heart. I’d co-led a group for women with eating disorders during my last two years of school, and I’d loved it, the fast pace and the treacly intimacy.
I arrived at the N Building, the child and family clinic, where the seminar was taking place, and I found that our teachers were two junior psychologists not long past internship themselves. In grad school, seasoned psychologists taught and supervised within specific areas of expertise; at Columbia-Presbyterian, too. I’d anticipated the same at Kings County, though I would later wonder if in this expectation I’d only been setting myself up for disappointment. “What is a group?” our teachers proposed once everyone was assembled. “Is a group one person? Is a group two people? Is a group a bunch of strangers waiting in line together at a grocery store?”
We were seated around a large table—the adult-track interns, the child-track interns, and a handful of psychiatry residents whom we’d only seen around. We interns shot each other looks to relieve a strong mutual feeling of insult. We replied to our teachers in silence, a tool of our trade. The psychiatry residents picked up our slack.
“A group can be anything!” exclaimed one of them, a salt-and-pepper-haired man in plastic-framed glasses.
“Groups are everywhere!” offered another with undue enthusiasm. I imagined that there must have been few rhetorical questions in medical school. Maybe they hadn’t been allowed to speak at all.
The teachers seemed relieved to have participants. They all went back and forth. An hour passed this way, the interns stony faced, the psychiatry resident with the glasses proudly sharing group techniques he was pioneering, like this one to deal with reticent, inpatient adolescents: “I curse to let them know that I’m cool.” We interns told him that if foul language did not come naturally to him, the kids would see right through it. Like most of us seated around the table that afternoon, he looked disheartened.
By the time I made it back to the court clinic in the afternoon, the doctors were already well into their post-lunch interviews in the holding cells downstairs. I couldn’t go down to join them, because one could not just waltz into the basement as if arriving at a potluck supper. The conflict between forensics and didactics was obviously going to be a problem. I went to Scott to explain my predicament, suggesting that I occasionally be excused from the Tuesday or Thursday class in order to actually spend the entire day that had been promised me on my rotation. My request seemed so reasonable that it surprised me when he said “Absolutely not” and looked at me with some suspicion, as if I were a high school student trying to wriggle out of last period.
A couple days later, during a
Another defendant was brought in. He was twenty-six and from the islands. He was big and looked menacing until he sat down and started to cry fat tears like a toddler’s. Dr. Pine and Dr. Wolfe could not establish whether he had a history of psych hospitalizations or had simply been in the hospital for other health problems. The defendant was too confused to be helpful. Not fit. As the guard led him out, I reluctantly got up and excused myself to go back to the hospital. Seminars were starting that week, and though the topics would shift, the timing would not. One month in and my days at forensicswere from then on to be interrupted. The hospital was an hour door-to-door from the court clinic, and the seminars were that long as well, so I’d be missing three hours at my rotation to attend them, which made little sense to me, but it was the schedule I’d been handed. Our first mandatory seminar was on group therapy, and at least it was a modality close to my heart. I’d co-led a group for women with eating disorders during my last two years of school, and I’d loved it, the fast pace and the treacly intimacy.
I arrived at the N Building, the child and family clinic, where the seminar was taking place, and I found that our teachers were two junior psychologists not long past internship themselves. In grad school, seasoned psychologists taught and supervised within specific areas of expertise; at Columbia-Presbyterian, too. I’d anticipated the same at Kings County, though I would later wonder if in this expectation I’d only been setting myself up for disappointment. “What is a group?” our teachers proposed once everyone was assembled. “Is a group one person? Is a group two people? Is a group a bunch of strangers waiting in line together at a grocery store?”
We were seated around a large table—the adult-track interns, the child-track interns, and a handful of psychiatry residents whom we’d only seen around. We interns shot each other looks to relieve a strong mutual feeling of insult. We replied to our teachers in silence, a tool of our trade. The psychiatry residents picked up our slack.
“A group can be anything!” exclaimed one of them, a salt-and-pepper-haired man in plastic-framed glasses.
“Groups are everywhere!” offered another with undue enthusiasm. I imagined that there must have been few rhetorical questions in medical school. Maybe they hadn’t been allowed to speak at all.
The teachers seemed relieved to have participants. They all went back and forth. An hour passed this way, the interns stony faced, the psychiatry resident with the glasses proudly sharing group techniques he was pioneering, like this one to deal with reticent, inpatient adolescents: “I curse to let them know that I’m cool.” We interns told him that if foul language did not come naturally to him, the kids would see right through it. Like most of us seated around the table that afternoon, he looked disheartened.
By the time I made it back to the court clinic in the afternoon, the doctors were already well into their post-lunch interviews in the holding cells downstairs. I couldn’t go down to join them, because one could not just waltz into the basement as if arriving at a potluck supper. The conflict between forensics and didactics was obviously going to be a problem. I went to Scott to explain my predicament, suggesting that I occasionally be excused from the Tuesday or Thursday class in order to actually spend the entire day that had been promised me on my rotation. My request seemed so reasonable that it surprised me when he said “Absolutely not” and looked at me with some suspicion, as if I were a high school student trying to wriggle out of last period.
A couple days later, during a
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