At four years old, did you distribute medications and legal drugs?
Yes, it was the fifties, before there were diagnoses like ADHD. They took me to the pediatrician because she wouldn't keep me still and the doctor said to put me to work.
A curious doctor.
At four years old I already knew how to read and my father, who owned a pharmacy, put me to work with Roy, the black delivery man who couldn't read. We started at six in the morning and sometimes finished at midnight. That was my job until I was 16 years old. I remember going to brothels to bring medication, I saw all kinds of situations.
What is your best memory?
When Marilyn Monroe came to film the movie Niagara, Roy and I went to her apartment to give her her medication and we stayed for a long time. I became famous, I lived off that story for 20 years.
And the worst memory?
When I was 15 years old my father had a brain tumor and gradually lost his mind. He raised me, my mother never wanted to have children. Studies have been done on girls raised by men and they are very different, more authoritarian, more self-confident, less empathetic, and have fewer children.
Roy became his life guardian.
At that time there were no black people outside of Harlem. I went with Roy to black restaurants, I loved that culture. I remember one snowstorm night, Roy's people were laughing at the breakdowns and crashes that had occurred with his cars. White people didn't laugh at those things, rather they were dramas.
I understand.
I saw a huge difference in the psyche of both cultures. The black one was much funnier. In the bars everyone danced and I loved people who did it alone. In white society they did not dance alone.
What happened in your adolescence?
I got involved in the civil rights movement to the point that the FBI investigated me, but after a while, that movement didn't want white people, it hurt me a lot.
What made you become a psychologist?
While writing my PhD in English Philology I worked at night in a dingy psychiatric hospital. Many doctors were foreigners and I helped them write their cases, and I was good at it. He had read Freud.
Are all our therapeutic stories variations on the same themes?
Yes, excess or lack of attachment, the need for love, appears in all of them; very primitive aspects. Despite this, people have very different lives and parents.
What is it that heals us?
Although I am tired of the word resilience, when you have suffered extreme trauma you have to find a way to overcome it, and it is very difficult. The case of Laura, which I narrate in the book, abandoned by her father in a cabin with her little brothers when she was 8 years old, is very significant.
Tell me.
She had to be their mother and she had no idea. On TV she saw a series about the military in which there was a very kind colonel and Laura said to herself: “I'm going to pretend that my father is that colonel and I'm going to behave like him with my brother and my sister,” and that's what she did. .
Did you get them okay?
Yes. When she felt cornered, she imagined that this character told her: “You have to be the type of person who doesn't give up.” People who are determined to see things through find that kind of resilience.
You have dealt with very difficult cases.
At a meeting of alumni we all stood up to applaud the war heroes, and I thought: “In my office I have seen people of incredible daily bravery, because the enemy lives with them.” All the people who are tortured in their families are prisoners of war. Keeping your sanity in such cases is true heroism.
What quality do you admire most?
The goodness. My parents dedicated time, energy, and money to those in need, and if someone couldn't afford medication, my father didn't care. I always admired him, but I'm not like that, good by nature.
It's strange that he worked for four years.
It wasn't such a bad idea, it instilled work habits in me, gave me a purpose, taught me to be independent and trust myself. Niagara Falls was a very touristy place, so I met people from all over the world, it was very interesting.
And the cons?
I didn't know how to play with other children and since I never saw a mother acting as a mother, it was something I had to learn.
Did that maternal detachment mark you?
I don't think so. She loved her very much, she was a very intelligent woman and when I grew up we did many things together, we had a great time. For me it was a surprise to discover that mothers told their children what to do; She never did, luckily.
