I LEARN I AM DOOMED

While one book in my father’s study, Sexual Behavior of the Human Male, relieved one of my anxieties and had a positive effect on my development, there were other of his books I explored that had their darker side.  That was particularly true of two books by specialists in child development.  In bold black and white they wrote that any child who was seriously abused and neglected up to the age of eight was doomed. I was exactly eight years old when I and three younger siblings were adopted by Fred and Evelyn Luchs, a young Presbyterian minister, and his wife.  All four of us had hidden histories of serious neglect and abuse.  Here I was, six years later at age fourteen, reading that I was doomed, that my dreams were never to be realized. This information came to me in authoritative black and white type written by authors with impressive credentials in the field of child development.

          There was, the psychologists observed, no possibility such a child could recover his emotional health and live a normal life.  He would be frequently depressed. His chances of a happy marriage were nil.  He would likely follow in the footsteps of his closest biological relatives.   If they were alcoholics, so would he be.  My biological father was an alcoholic.  If they became criminals, so would he.  My father, one uncle and one aunt were at various times locked up in the prisons of the state of Ohio. Furthermore, such a boy had little chance of  succeeding in a career.          

          I immediately fell into a depression.  How could I, at age 14. stand up against the verdict of such professionals?  What I read so depressed me I did not even want to turn for help to my wise and sympathetic adoptive mother.  I was afraid she would believe the psychologists.  I did not want her to know that their verdict was I was doomed.     

          My depression lasted for about three weeks.  Then, I became defiant. I rejected the verdict of the psychologists and–– most important of all–– I said to myself, “I am going to prove they are wrong!”  I was not saying I did not have a battle overcoming my anger because of the way I and my younger siblings had been treated by our biological relatives.  To this day I have a strong startle reflex, a certain sign of physical child abuse, and I have some terrible nightmares.  I am not saying that I was not sometimes depressed or that I was not an unusually sensitive child.  I was all of those.

          But the predictions of the child development specialists turned out to be wrong.  I was blest with a happy 30- year marriage.  My career? I passed a rigorous Foreign Service exam and became an American diplomat.  I served for 30 years with honor and was promoted to the senior ranks of the Foreign Service.  Not a single member of my own family (four sons and nine grandchildren) has ever been arrested or been in foster care.  One brother did become an alcoholic but joined AAA and had his last drink in his mid- 30s.