Slomo started a joke*

 

“Everybody has the capacity to dream up and believe anything he wants to. The shrinks, or the psychoanalysts, would call it a ‘personal delusional system.’ And you believe it because you choose to. When I skate, I try to regress down to what I think is about age eleven-and-a-half, which is the last of the idealistic years, before the testosterone and all the other stuff takes off and then before you know it, you’re in the middle third of life.” – John Kitchin, known as “Slomo”

Many people have seen or heard of Slomo, or have watched the New York Times video op-ed about him. Dr. John Kitchin, happy local legend, quit his medical practice of twenty years to “do what he wants to,” which is to skate the boardwalk of Pacific Beach, San Diego. When the video appeared in March 2014, he had been a’rolling for sixteen years. Now, well into his seventies, he may still be at it.

I’ve shown the video to different clients over the years, from an admitted place of near-sighted­ness. I imagined there was a lesson in it, something that could help fearful eighteen-year-olds and older lost souls see that we should own our life completely, not have to glue ourselves to a Procrust­ean bed of false meaning and purpose.

Those shows are over. John: I am not a psychoanalyst. But Google can’t find a single word about your “personal delusional system,”** and I have never heard the term in my twenty-five years of immersion in psycho­therapy. Is your belief in the idea your own delusional system?

Just as the emotional melody and harmonies of a song can transform simpleminded lyrics into art, so the free-spirited video vibe and the metaphysical candy (being “in the zone”) handed out by Mr. Kitchin can mask the absurdity of his meaning. Should people, who have one life to live, take a neurotically wishful need to exit the world and let themselves believe it is valid? Is Bert­rand Russell on target where he says

“We ought to stand up and look the world frankly in the face. We ought to make the best we can of the world, and if it is not so good as we wish, after all it will still be better than what these others have made of it in all these ages.”***

or should we regress to age 11½ and imagine we’re rollerblading toward Indians in a forest?

I would not begrudge Kitchin his quarter-of-a-life’s pleasure in lateral escapism, but for the fact that his belief in personal dream realities has, over the past several years, been replicated across the land as a poison absorbed and projected by millions: those fifty-three percent of all Republicans who believe that Donald Trump is still the presi­dent, who believe that white people own the country, who are methodically killing our democ­racy by trying to own elections. They all have their personal delusional system, a way to deny the real world while turning it to garbage because they want to.

Whenever I see the evil banality of these fools, I am reminded of those “crazy­making” parents who can grow emotional anguish**** and schizophrenia in their chil­dren***** by perpetrating their own psy­chosis culture at home. And I think of Slomo, who acts and thinks like a child, believing it’s absolutely, perfectly fine to hide your mind in a wish.

- - - - - - - - - - -

* The Bee Gees, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b3kBDtjRtB0.

** “A Personal Delusional System” is instrumental music by Nit Grit.

*** Lord Bertrand Russell’s 1927 lecture, “Why I Am Not a Christian.”

**** Peter Breggin, Toxic Psychiatry, p. 34.

***** John Modrow, How To Become a Schizophrenic