The, uh, mother said, you and my son stopped her. I said, well, not really. I’m, I’m his counselor. And she said, uh, how’s he doing? And I said, he’s not talking to me right now. And she said, what? He’s not talking to you. She said, go get him. So one of the guards went down to his cell and brought him up and she looked at him and she said, are you not talking to the doctor? And he said, no, he’s a honky. And she went whack for his head. And she said, he said, don’t do that, mama don’t do that. Well, are you gonna talk with him? No, mama whack. She hits him again. The Tom Screen podcast is owned and made possible by ethical marketing service. If your business is struggling with Google or Facebook ads, maybe you’re frustrated, figuring it out. Or there’s a performance. Ethical marketing service has worked on hundreds of accounts and we can help in this area. We offer a 30 day money back guarantee if you would like to find out if we can help. It’s a free no sales consultation call. And the link is in the description.
Enjoy the episode. Thomas Green here with ethical marketing service on the episode. Today we have Evan Longin. Evan. Welcome. Thank you. Pleased to be here. I am pleased to have you. Would you like to take a moment and tell the audience a little bit about yourself and what you do? Sure. I have been a psychotherapist and professor of psychology for 45 years and part of my interest was studying why psychotherapy fails. And I came up with four particular areas that are common to psychotherapy failures. And those same four factors as I researched our civilization, I found always are part of failure in society and ultimately evil. And so I wanted to get out to the public for them to understand what these four factors are that come together and bring about demise to the civilization. So the first one, you want me to cite them, that is definitely where I was going with it.
Um And thank you for the introduction. Uh The, the first thing I was going to ask you about was um I suppose uh defining terms because I don’t, I don’t hear the the term evil uh that frequently. Um at least I think it might be reserved for a specific type of behavior. But how do you define the term evil? And then we’ll, we’ll get into your fore. So I, I define evil as those things that happen in life, to the culture, to people, to each other that prohibit growth and development of the culture of the world. So, for example, um I would say people who refuse to uh deal with climate change or uh promoting what could be evil. So I suppose the uh the qualifier, there would be intent if they’re doing it purposefully, would you say that’s, yes, yes, that they’re doing it purposefully and disregarding of the science.
Uh Whereas if they’re mistaken, probably not evil behavior, perhaps just ignorant, possibly. So again, it’s not evil until these four factors come together. The first one is, is power over behavior. So that uh when a individual or AAA parent or a president or uh a company utilize the power they have to dominate others. The second one is binary thinking that us and them, they are not the same as me. And that happens in psychotherapy too. That’s one of the biggest problems in psychotherapy. The psychotherapist believes they are somehow more empowered. They are somehow more knowledgeable than the client or patient who comes to meet with them. The third one is simplistic solutions to complex problems. So, uh for example, uh building a wall is going to save the world from uh migration.
And the, the fourth one is controlling information, uh not letting the truth be known um giving alternative facts rather than being open to dialogue about what’s happened. So those are the four factors and I first noted them in psychotherapy. But man, oh man, I think you being a person who’s interested in ethics, understand that those same four factors come to play daily in our world. Definitely. Um, and, uh, just a quick question in terms of, um, do you have, does it have to meet all four or, um, can it meet some of them and still be evil? What are your thoughts there? No, I think it has to meet all four. And as we approach all four things get much more um uh precarious. How so um when people uh on news, uh for example, in the, in the US Fox news, as they start to change the dialogue or change the facts, we’re starting to see um the growth of possible evil.
Uh when a political party uh has control or overly influential in that we see things grow even more difficult. So we, we see first the control of information, then we see uh distortion of facts, then we see a power base using its influence to change that. Then we see whether or not uh they start to set up binary thinking like migrants are inferior to white people or that they use their power to somehow uh hurt individuals or political beings. What we, what we see today in the news is some individual who takes out his sniper rifle and is threatening to kill the president. Uh So we see that that now enters into evil because it’s power over behavior, us versus them along with the wrong information and simplistic solution to a problem.
So that starts the process of evil. Does that answer your question? Uh Yeah, I think so. I was going to summarize by saying, um as people start to use, um let’s say some of the, the four factors they’re incrementally um going towards evil. Would you say that’s a good? And what um what led you to creating the four factors? What was the thought process there? The thought process began with psychotherapy. So I uh I was a professor of graduate counseling. Uh and I had a small group, an institute that three of us founded about uh 25 years ago in which we, we were trying to promote postmodern behavior, postmodern psychology. And that was a whole new um way of thinking about psychotherapy. And in, in our work, we started to see certain people coming to us who weren’t getting well. But for example, I had a young boy, uh 12 year old boy who was thrown out of mclean’s hospital, that’s a very famous psychiatric hospital um in uh the Boston area.
And it’s part of Harvard Medical School and he was thrown out of treatment because they said he was treatment refractory. Holy Cow. He’s treatment refractory. It’s his problem. It’s his problem that he’s not utilizing psychotherapy. Well, so our team brought him in and we asked his parents to join us. Um and we had him join our treatment team. So we have a reflecting team, a group of people, not just one therapist, but there were three of us on the, on the treatment team. And he became the fourth member of the team. And we had him sit back with us and listen to the discussion of his parents uh about the history of his problem. And the therapist working with the family asked the parents, when did this begin? And he said he was a perfect kid. He was a great kid. But somewhere around the death of the grandmother, he started to act up and we, we didn’t understand what could have happened to make him act up.
Well, the father turns to the mother and says, well, have you ever told him how much pain you were in? How depressed you were at the death of your mother? Uh She said, no, of course not. I don’t want to burden him with that information. Well, shortly afterwards we go to the reflecting team and we start talking and he says, hold it a second, hold it a second. You mean to tell me my mother was depressed? I just thought she was crazy. So, so we said, well, what made her crazy? Well, she didn’t respond like she used to respond. She wasn’t warm, she wasn’t available. And I said, so how did that affect you? He said, oh, I started getting angry. I started telling people I don’t want to be part of their system. They weren’t any longer available to me. And then he said, can you believe that I’ve been in a psychiatric hospital and my mother was the problem and it was right in front of us an amazing turnaround because we had him listen to the discussion of his family.
So we’ve done that a lot. Was that control of information? Um, is that her being guilty of a bit of control of information there? And that’s why it went wrong. It was part of it. Control of information. The, the the psychiatry world was power over behavior. They, they didn’t listen to him. And what he was his problem was they weren’t open to the possibility that he wasn’t the patient. They set him up as a separate individual apart from the dialogue going on in his life in his world. And the binary thinking is the refractory that you mentioned, right? That he’s a patient. He can’t have anything to say. We know the answers. And uh I suppose the um I don’t think there was a solution offered though. Um In that case was there. Yeah, the solution was that he came to us and got to listen and the family got to present itself in new ways and provide new information and be open to new possibilities.
That’s what, that’s what this is all about where, you know, we’re postmodernist. So what is postmodern? The first thing about postmodern is that there are possible, many possible ways to go that we’re opening to listening in dialogue to other people, discuss ideas and see what could emerge. The second thing is we, we provide a safe nonthreatening environment where we’re all equal in the discussion. So though I’m Dr Longman, I prefer being called Evan Longman and I try to reduce the distance between the client and myself. Um The third thing is that we don’t look for simplistic solutions. We look to see the possibility of many different solutions. I’ll give you another example. I was working with a team that went to the Middle East and uh we were bringing uh Palestinian adolescent together with uh Israeli adolescents.
And so we had binary 50. And when we interviewed these young people, initially, they saw the problem as being the other side and they did not take responsibility that their side might have something to offer to why this was a crisis and the simplistic solution is to shoot one another. Hm. So um we tried to change the binary thinking to we’re all human. We all have similar things in common. And with a team, again, we would have some of the Israeli and Palestinian youth on a team with a team director and we would have one person interviewed by another of the counselors. And when they listened without judgment without immediately reacting and only listen to the story that the other person, the Palestinian or the Israeli was saying what they came to is hold it.
That’s my story. That’s what I think about him. And he thinks the same thing about me, how could anybody think that way about me? And so we’ve reduced the, the, the difference between people. We brought them together in dialogue in a nonthreatening environment. And we looked together to collaborate on solutions. So the first thing we did to make solutions is we had to work on art projects together. And so there was two Palestinians and two Israelis to an art group. And they had to come together with how they were going to create an art project. And they saw that there were lots of differences and difficulties coming together and they would have to dialogue amongst themselves about coming to common solutions. So here again, we use this postmodern thinking, this idea that there isn’t one solution that there are many solutions that collaboration between people is helpful that being in a nonthreatening environment that’s open to you being equal to me uh brings about the possibility of change um in total agreement.
Um The um I suppose the question I would have is why, what’s the alternative or why would anyone be against um the way that you described uh post the postmodern approach. Well, first of all, when we go back and deconstruct the history of certain ideas, we find out they’re rooted in uh the idea that people who have information are more powerful than other people. And people go back to these ideas that haven’t really been tested. Oh, let’s look at Galileo, for example. Um when Galileo confirmed Copernicus’s ideas about the universe, the uh the pope and the clergy knew he was right. They were the scientists of the time, they knew he was right. But what did they do? They said getting this information out to the public would be harmful to the church.
They can’t handle the truth as a movie, right? You can’t handle the truth. Well, the, the clergy, the pope, the Catholic hierarchy believed that they couldn’t handle the truth. And so they Galileo, he was a great Catholic. He was a brilliant man. He never did anything to hurt society. He just wanted to get information out. So why do these things persist? Because it gives them power, it keeps them in control. Uh for the longest time, I happen to love a lot of Sigmund Freud’s writings, but he was wrong. He was wrong in lots of places even. He knew he was wrong. He know he knew that it wasn’t totally correct. And yet Freudian psychology was in power for decades because they could earn more money. It gave them more status. They didn’t want to be open to. What more recently they started to realize is they have to be more open.
So ideas persist because some people gain status power, money influence by maintaining those ideas, even when they aren’t correct. The cigarette companies, cigarette companies, they didn’t want anybody to know that it kills you. They kept the information back, they kept the science back. They, they saw themselves as somehow safe from what all these other people were doing. They, they were just people, they didn’t count. We can go through lots of examples. Uh, well, I was gonna, you, you touched on it briefly? I was gonna say of the two, let’s say Freudian psychology versus, uh, postmodern of the two, which is, I suppose most open to the scientific method. Um But presumably, um well, what’s your thoughts there? Yeah. OK. So, um I believe that postmodernism is the scientific method. That what we do is through dialogue through Socratic discussion of listening to the other person and collaborating with them in the promotion of what that leads us to and what the possibilities are.
That’s really the scientific method. Uh Unfortunately, uh when I graduated from uh my doctorate at BU, um my parents gave me uh 35 volumes of the psychoanalytic Study of the child. I was so pleased because originally in my graduate studies, I, I was mostly studying under Freudian psychologists, psychiatrists. And, and looking back over those years when I saw that as my guy, I, I still have him in my office. I have all the volumes because it’s historical, but they weren’t correct. In fact, a lot of the information they presented was distorted or presented in a way to make their ideas look like. And some people stick with that. It gives them status. Uh, they don’t want to hear that it isn’t working. Uh, people still practice psychoanalysis but, uh, most of us can’t afford to go see them.
You have to go five days a week for years. Uh, you lie down there and a psychiatrist sits behind you and then tells you what’s wrong with you. Well, the only people who are going for psychoanalysis now are people who want to be psycho aa analysts themselves who wanna be psychoanalysts. So they uh they join the fraternity. You were given these examples. I uh that the one of the four factors are going off each time you say something. So it’s like control of information in this particular instance. Um So it, it is uh an interesting, um an interesting thing that you come up with. Uh the uh the interesting question that I um that occurs to me as we’re, as we’re speaking is you’ve made these observations and um I find them interesting anyway, but what do we then do with that? Information, thoughts there? So, first of all, so in in our case, and me, as when I was working with my team, we trained dozens of psychotherapists in the way we do things. We want to promote people learning about this, participating in it being part of our teams.
Um I tried in my classes uh in graduate school uh to teach these ideas as well to my students. And part of the problem was my, my uh chairperson in my department would tell students, Evans very philosophical and theoretical and I don’t know if you’re able to understand it. Well, that wasn’t the case for my students. They loved it and many of them went on to study with me after they got their degrees. Uh So one, I wanted to spread the information train people, teach people and it became imperative. That’s why I wrote the book. I read The Roots of Evil. I don’t know if you had a chance to read it, but it goes over these ideas. And I said, I felt this need to get the information out to the public that these are the things that are going on in our culture today and we have to be on alert for them or we’re going to face grave consequences. And um would you say that there is more of these behaviors going on now or is it just sort of um steady throughout history?
Any thoughts that it comes and goes? And we’ve seen all throughout history, these things create evil. Uh We go back to the Nazis. This is one that everybody agrees on. All those factors. Were there we go back to uh the Spanish inquisition, all those factors were there we go back to the Roman Empire. All those factors were there uh throughout the, throughout our culture, we go back to the very formation of the Bible and the information that they chose to leave out. I mean, we can go to the Old Testament or the New Testament. In both cases, they abridged the information that was available at the time and nobody knows about it. How many people know about the Council of Nice. How many people know about the Gnostic gospels? Are you familiar with the gnostic gospels? You’ll be making stuff up. I wouldn’t know. Yes. II, I, you should read about it. The Gnostic gospels were the, the gospels to jesus’ life that were done by his contemporaries.
They included Thomas who became known as doubting Thomas, Mary Magdalene, Judas, all of them wrote accounts of jesus’ life. But at the Council of nice, they decided that they all had to be burned. And so they destroyed almost 80 Gospels of Jesus by the people who knew him instead. They took the gospels of people who were 100 years after Jesus who learned about the stories being handed down. And those left the Catholic church to become a very powerful organization and do exactly what Jesus said. They didn’t want, they didn’t want a priestly cast. He wanted people to talk to, to God themselves. And so nobody knew about the Gnostic gospels until I think 1957 when they were found in a pit, a burn pit in Nag Hammadi Egypt.
And they were fragmented together. And all of a sudden, we had a different story. It’s much the same but some very different aspects to the story. And they still are not known by people. How many people know that Adam had wives before Eve, mostly we don’t. But in the apocrypha, the the contemporaneous writings to the Bible where these stories were drawn, drawn from. Um Adam was originally connected to Adam, man and woman were back to back connected in the garden. And in the original stories, they went to God and they said, listen, this is very difficult. We can’t make love this way and all the other creatures can in the garden, but we can’t. So God said, John, I made a mistake. That’s not a good idea. And he separated them into Adam and Lilith. So now we went from Adam and Adam ah to Adam and Lois and unfortunately, Adam and Lilith, according to these stories, uh conflicted on who should be on top and who should be more powerful.
So Lilith went to God and said, I want to be on top. I want to be the stronger. And God said, no, I’m making Adam the strong. So in the story and now I don’t know that these stories are any true than the story in the Bible. But nonetheless, in this original story story, excuse me, um Lilith curses out God and flees from the garden and copulates with the animals and creates all the rest of the people in the universe. Now, I as a young man always asked a question. Where did everybody else come from? It came from Lilith in the original story. And then Adam and Eve, he took a bone. God took a bone from uh Adam and she became his wife. So again, these stories, they’re interesting. I, I don’t believe they’re any more correct than the story in the Bible. Nonetheless, we should know about them. They should be part of our discussion. They, they, they enrich us as people to know the origins of where we come from.
I agree and it’s an interesting topic. Um I don’t know why this comes to me, but uh I’d just like to know what your thoughts are. Um in terms of, if you see these um factors, the four factors in, let’s say the, the leaders that are in your country or whatever that example might be. Um what to do about them. Ok. Well, you gotta vote for sure. Um I’ve been running around trying to get my book out so that people could read these ideas and determine for themselves, um how they should handle these leaders. Um I, you know, I believe that ultimately, probably much like you, that we have the dialogue with the people who are um as we see problematic with their support of, of uh dangerous people. But right now, the first thing we have to do is vote and stop them from becoming in power afterwards. We need to meet with them and hear their pain and their anger for why they’re behaving this way.
But first we have to take control and to keep ourselves safe and then we can sit back and dialogue and talk about how we go forward. Look, Nazi Germany was as, you know, a very evil force on the world. Uh, today, the German people might be the most moral sensible people in the world. Well, why did that happen is because we didn’t do to them what we did after World War one, we didn’t continue to destroy their culture and we listened to their pain and helped them get reestablished. That’s what I believe has to happen. We have to first make sure these people who are behaving poorly are stopped and then we have to sit down with them and talk with them about how to go forward. Do you give any advice to, um, let’s say if, if someone was to do you read your book and then think, yeah, that’s a, that’s a very astute observation. Um, do you give any guidance to them around the, uh, possibility of them referring to someone as evil when they might just be mistaken or do you know where I’m going with that?
Yes. I, I don’t think we should refer to them as evil. We have to refer to them as somebody who doesn’t have the correct information or enough information or not listening to what other possibilities there are, but we don’t want to do, go around and make it us versus them because that will only further excite. So, yeah, I’ve been, I’ve been lecturing around my community. I’ve been invited to uh the library to present bookstores, uh uh the newspaper trying to tell people, think, think about what’s going on. Understand the possibilities, join together, come together and, and stopping this dangerous situation from going forward. This morning. I was listening to uh a TV show and they were talking about how they started uh this third party uh movement so that you don’t vote for a Democrat or Republican.
Well, that’s very scary actually because what it’s gonna do is make it possible that Donald Trump can overcome the difference with uh Biden because the power is being drawn away from by splitting the vote, splitting the vote. Yes. Right now, we, we’ve got to stick together all of us who want to behave in moral kind, loving ways have to join together first to say we first have to make sure we stop this movement and it’s happening all over hungry turkey, Russia. I don’t know, you can’t see my uh pin but I have my Ukraine P on uh we have to join together and say we gotta stop these guys from dominating us. Have you got any thoughts about I’ve heard this phrase once. Um And I’m just interested to know your thoughts on it. Um What evidence can you give someone who does not value evidence if you’re talking about, um, you know, giving people information if, if they’re not open to any information, what do you do?
You drop back? 20 punt? Um, it, it’s, it’s definitely a problem. I mean, many people have these, uh, arguments that’s not based on fact or information. It’s based on faith and I asked those people to, to challenge them as to what their faith is telling them. And are they really operating in the grounds of their faith? Look, I think Jesus is one of the greatest figures of all time. I love Jesus, but I don’t believe he’s God. I believe he didn’t believe he was God. In fact, in the, in when I read the testimony by Thomas, Thomas says in the, in his testimony, His gospel that Jesus says, look inside yourself. God is within all of us. You can find God by looking into your own humanity and you will know how to join with God.
But they didn’t want that in the Bible. They didn’t want to conclude that they said he was a, a crazy man who doubted Jesus. No, he, he, he loved Jesus, but he, he didn’t agree that Jesus is uh power was what should be uh dealt with, it should be God within yourself. So people of faith have to go back and say, what is, what did Jesus teach? You? Did Jesus teach you that people coming from the Middle East or people coming from South America are somehow uh not equal to us. I don’t think so. So I ask them to look into their own testimony to God and say if it’s what being preached, really what your faith tells you or appeal to their faith rather than their rationality. Yes. And help them see, look, their faith is, God loves everyone. He doesn’t love Republicans more than democrats. He doesn’t love white people more than black people. God as we know it, as we uh explain, our faith loves all of us and we are supposed to be operating in God’s image.
OK. Well, thank you for that. Um I wanted to touch on something which um is in your profile around. Um You’ve worked with people in jails which I, I found uh a little detail there which I thought was very interesting. Um Have you got any perhaps stories or learnings from uh counseling people in prison? Well, the first thing I learned was that the ideas that I was studying at the time didn’t work. So uh uh when I walked into to counsel and bring somebody to my counseling office in the jail uh and said to them, I’m your counselor. Uh Tell me how I could be helpful. They looked at me and said, you’re a fucking white honky. I don’t, I’m not talking to you. So I said, oh, this isn’t gonna work very well. And then one day a mother came up to me, she came for visiting time with her son, her, she had an 11 year old son that was, we had to, I, I was working in the detention center for the, uh, Children under 16 who were incarcerated.
And I’ll tell you a couple of stories. But this one, the, uh, mother said, you and my son stopped her. I said, well, not really. I’m, I’m his counselor. And she said, uh, how’s he doing? And I said, he’s not talking to me right now. And she said, what? He’s not talking to you. She said, go get him. So one of the guards went down to his cell and brought him up and she looked at him and she said, are you not talking to the doctor? And he said, no, he’s a honky. And she went whack across his head and she said, he said, don’t do that, mama don’t do that. Well, are you gonna talk with him? No, mama, what? She hits him again and, and, uh, he said, stop it. That hurts. And so she said, you’re not gonna talk to him. I’m gonna whack you one more time. Ok, mama, I’m gonna talk to him. I said, mama, would you come every week back here and meet with your son? And I, she, and he said, no, she won’t. He said, she said, yes, I will. And that moment I went running through the hall saying I discovered family therapy, I discovered family therapy and the social worker So I was, I was a fellow in psychology.
The social worker said you didn’t discover family therapy. There are other people out there doing it. I said, wow, why don’t they teach that in psychology? So, uh yeah, there was, there was uh a realization that one very, very bright young man said to me, listen, doc if I work with you and you help me, I can’t go home, I can’t go back to the streets. You’re taking away my ability to function as I need to function, to stay alive. And I said, well, I get it. I understand. I said, but maybe we could just talk about that over time and I not try to change you from being what you believe it that will keep you going forward. So, one of the things I understood, uh mostly having worked in that situation was that we had to adapt to what people needed, not give them what we think they should have. If they aren’t gonna take it, it isn’t good for them. That is a, that is a great story and thank you for sharing it.
Um I think you have more, shall we say therapy experience than I have been alive for? Um So I would, I would regret not asking you about perhaps other than the, the four factors that we talked about so far. Um What would you say that you’ve learned about the human being with all your experience? Well, first of all we have uh you know, the uh diagnostic manual uh listing at all these different uh syndromes and problems. And I think we need to throw that away. And I believe the thing that mostly causes people to be dysfunctional and develop uh mental issues is trauma and trauma is at the basis of most mental disorders. So I think we have to listen to their pain, we have to listen to their trauma. We have to help them get back in touch with the things that prohibit them from allowing themselves to uh develop a new story about themselves that they’re stuck.
Uh I sat with somebody just the other day who is telling me that the story that dominates his life is that his father brutalized him, that he realized that every time he wanted to express himself, he would get uh brutalized, assaulted by his father. And it’s taken him years and years of psychotherapy to really get that, that’s the origin of his problems. And ultimately, after finding that out, understanding that he had to forgive his father because his father didn’t know any better how to function. And his father had his own devils that guided him. So my sense is that any psychotherapy that helps you one understand the origins of your pain and then helps you find new ways to go forward and ultimately helps you to be forgiving and loving of yourself and others is what psychotherapy is all about a great answer.
Thank you. Um It, it makes me want to follow up on uh because you gave a, a great example on perhaps one of your, shall we say, what, what comes to mind for you in terms of the biggest success story that you’ve had in relation to dealing with a client, the biggest success story. That’s a tough one. I, I’d like, I’d like to think that many of the people who found their way into my office, um uh found it a useful experience and guide them to a new place. But I have one story in mind. Again. Uh This family, this mother was referred to me by her physician. Her son after school had gone back to school with a baseball bat and broke in all the windows on the first floor of the school. So he was told he can’t come back to school until he’s certified by a therapist to not be dangerous. And the family physician referred them to me. So when she called my office, I said, ok, uh as you might expect by now, I said, great, bring your son in tomorrow with his sister and your husband and we will all meet together.
Mother looked at, said to me off the phone. Uh No way. My son is a problem when that all come in for therapy. And I said, well, you’ll have to humor me because this is how I work. I would like you to bring your son in and your daughter and your husband? Oh, I’m not coming. I said, ok, call back the physician and ask him if he could refer somebody to you other than that, who does it differently? Well, he’ll be mad at me. He said, you’re the one who, who could help my son. So I said, ok, come in tomorrow. So the next day they arrive in my office and as you might suspect the mother and father that they’re with the son, but not the daughter. And I said, weren’t you supposed to bring your daughter? And she said, I’m not listening to everything you tell. I said, well, I should really send you home. But let’s all sit down, uh, in my office. And I said, I usually work with the team, but the team is not here today. So I’m gonna ask your son to be my assistant and we’re gonna work together on this.
And she said, you’re out of your mind. My son is a bad kid. He can’t be your assistant. I’m not listening to what he says. And I said, well, again, humor me. And I said to the son, move your chair next to me. You’re gonna be doctor with me and could listen to me. Kind of shrugged his shoulders. And I said, so what was happening in the family when you went and knocked out the windows? Don’t you answer that question? The mother said, and he sat there quietly. I said, do you have any idea why your mom doesn’t want me to hear what was going on when you went back to school and knocked out the windows? And he said, I’m not sure. And at that point for the first time, the father spoke up and he said, I can’t let this keep going on. My, my wife is a drunk when he came home from school that day, she was passed out on the floor and he went back to school and knocked out the windows.
Wow. I said, what a good thing you did. And the father said, why was that good? I said, because he was trying to call for help. He wanted us to pay attention to the drama going on in your family. And at that point, the mother left, the father said, thank you. Uh And I thought that was one of my best moments that instead of being labeled instead of being having to go forward as though he was, the problem was freed to see that he had good reason for doing what he did. I kind of don’t want to spoil the ending by asking. But I have to ask, was there any um improvement or they never came back to me? The mother went to a psychiatric hospital and the what I heard afterwards, the parents separated. Um but that, but I, for me, it was just that one moment of clarity that got them to treat the proper person. Yeah.
Um, and also, you know, finding the truth in some sense, uh, which is, I know I can, I can be painful, I suppose but is, uh, is definitely better than living in a lie. Absolutely. Absolutely. So, uh, redefining evil, um, are you proud of what you created? I am, but mostly it’s in a bubble. I, I have been unable mostly to get this book into the general milieu. Uh I’ve sent it to the major stations. Uh I’ve sent it to the major newspapers. Uh I’ve got great reviews in the local newspapers. I’ve got great reviews uh on the internet, but can’t get it out there. And that’s why I was so excited to be here with you and I hope you’re population that are listening to this will go out and share these ideas with other people. Well, I’ve heard, I’ve heard some themes around, um, let’s say people who have done best selling books and that sort of thing and, um, Amazon ads is a thing.
So, um, you get to put your book uh next to books that are similar when people are buying those. Um, so could be a, um, could be a piece of advice that might work for you. Um, in terms of uh how it was to write any, any thoughts there. Well, it took me about 20 years to write this. Uh I, it started out as a book for psychotherapists and then as I worked on it, it became more and more important to me to make these ideas useful to everyday life. So, it took me a long time. And do you enjoy the process of writing or is it about? Oh, I do. I have, uh, I have outlines for two more books. Uh, I have more time. I’m 77 now, so I have more time to work on those. All right. Well, um, congratulations for becoming an author. Um, and putting some something out into the world. I think not a lot of people get there so well done for that. Um Is there anything that I should have asked you about today?
No, I really enjoyed your interview. It’s, uh, thank you. Uh You’re, you’re clearly an interested and good person. So, thank you. Thank you. I appreciate that. Uh, and for people who do want to buy the book or connect with you, where do they go? They can go anywhere they get on Amazon a books. Um They can go on, uh, uh I can’t think of the name of the bookstore, uh Barnes and Noble. Barnes and Noble. Thank you, Barnes and Noble. They all have the book. Uh, but it’s hard to find if you’re not looking for it. All right, Evan. Well, thank you for being a great guest today and thank you for being a great host. And, uh, if ever you want me back, I’d love to work with you?
