About this blog

Greetings! You have arrived at Blog for the new book, Letters to the Editor, that were never published--and some other stuff . It is a compilation of the many letters o the editor that I have written in the past several years. I am continuing to write letters to the editor to various publications, like The New York Times,The record (of Bergen County, NJ) Psychiatric News, Newsweek, etc. They will be posted on this blog for your perusal and, hopefully, comments.

As an introduction to my book," Letters to the Editor that were never published," here is my introduction , synopsis, and index of chapters into which I have organized my letters.



INTRODUCTION


The New York Times is a journal like no other. National and international potentates of all sorts eye its contents warily, ---and hopefully, for educated reports and opinions about their doings.

It is an on-going enclyclopedia encompassing local, national and international events, along with the business world, all the arts, visual and performance: music, theater, dance, and all the rest of interesting show-biz, movies, and TV. Then there’s sports, food, society, many varieties of science, religion, history, military activities, research in many areas, medicine. In other words, endless interesting items and subjects that are changing all the time, as it keeps up with contemporary knowledge and devlopments throughout the world. It is an incredible educational resource encompassing a wide scope of human achievement, knowledge and interest. It is a convenient resource for one to acquire for themselves an impressive post-graduate education.

Perhaps the most interesting is the editorial section, with its in-house editorials, usually about something special going on at the time. The whole Op-Ed page is dedicated to major articles by outstanding authorities, important contributors in their field. The “Letters to the Editor” section is set aside for interested readers to contribute expressions of opinion about some article in a recent issue. Unfortunatley the chances of beiing published is quite slim--like one in a thousand--because that’s the number of letters the letter editor receives each day!

I have been addicted to writing letters for possible appearance on that page, and fortunately, and happily, over the years I have seen a handful of my letters in print. But I have written well over a hundred in the last decade. I decided to get them into print one way or an other. Amazon.com has a new program in which they will publish an author gratis to appear in their e-book program--which is more than a golden opportunity --to which I expect to be admitted .

The prevalence of new and interesting publishers referred to as ”on-order publishers” makes it much easier to get a book published nowadays. I have fortunately selected Trafford Publishing to do mine.

So, along with “Letters to the Editor of The New York Times’, and other publications, like The Record ( BergenCounty, N.J.), Newsweek, Business Week, the New York Post and Psychiatric News, a scientific publication aimed at psychiatrists, I have included a bunch of essays on topics of interest to me--as well as dissertations on a number of topics of broad interest, which, hopefully, will be of interest to my readers

Inasmuch as many of these letters have reference to the same or similar subjects, there is some repetition from one article to another, which I have tried to minimize without losing the gist.


PREFACE

Organizing my collection of some 150 or so of such letters and brief essays, this book is a compilation of my offerings in the subjects of most interest to myself and of most general interest, representing major issues of the day that are controversial and looking for solutions.

The letters to the editor, letters to prominent influential people, my own essays on a variety of subjects, and some other odd notes here and there are organized in chapters for continuity.

Each chapter is opened with a general description of the subject, its history, a general description of its scope, developments, and characteristics. There follows individal letters expressing my own opinion about specific Times articles on various aspects of the subject involved.

The chapter of Essays includes more lengthy dissertations on subjects of interest in our culture about which I have especially strong feelings, either for or against.

Again, I want to mention that there is some repetition from one item to another, inasmch as they are on similar topics and to eliminate all repetitious sentences would interfere with the flow of the particular content of the letter.


TABLE OF CONTENTS


Chapter 1 Psychiatry

Chapter 2 Psychoanalysis

Chapter 3 Depression

Chapter 4 Religion

Chapter 5 Bishops and Priests

Chapter 6 Homosexuality

Chapter 7 Violence

Chapter 8 Miscellaneous

Chapter 9 Essays

Sunday, January 6, 2013



Doctor' Alexander's New Reality

Having just read the article  " My Proof of Heaven", (Newsweek,  
October 15, Page 30) in which Dr. Eban Alexander describes his  life-
changing ecstatic experience during seven days in a comatose state due  
to meningitis, I am again amazed that an  intelligent, informed,  
scientifically educated professional can be so in need of reassurance  
that there will be an after-life that he could deny the "real  
reality"  and believe that his experience was a " new reality".  
Whether one wants to describe his experience as a dream-like state or  
hallucinatory experience is irrelevant. Sorry to say, doctor, you  
weren't in heaven that is overseen by the loving god that is supposed  
to have created this earth.  That  same loving  god who required that  
his only son be tortured and executed so that he might forgive sinners  
for the rest of eternity, or the god that also created the ebola virus  
and millions of other deadly micro-organisms, ( including the one of  
the doctor's meningitis), or to give a variety of malignancies to  
little kids, and to watch as the human race  that he created  
systematically massacres itself  in larger and larger numbers. Sorry,  
doctor--- when the body dies, there is no brain left to generate  
ideas, visions,or  emotions ---or any other sensations that you may  
have  experienced during that week. There is only one reality.
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