Waiting for the train – A chance encounter taps into bigger things.

Click To Enlarge To See My Little Engine.

My wife and I have been on the road for the past few weeks. First I gave a presentation in Vermont (go here, but watch out: The file is 15 MB). From there we cut over to Maine, where we have been enjoying the ocean, craft shows, lobster . . . and trains. While my wife has been frequenting craft shows, I have run my model steam engine at a couple of “steam-ups,” and visited two steam railroad museums. (The American Dairy Council’s slogan used to be “You Never Outgrow Your Need for Milk,” but it’s really “Trains.”)

One of the high points of this vacation (for me, anyway) was bringing my little engine to the museum where its big brother resides. Look closely at the photo above, and you can see my engine perched on the running board of its prototype. As I stepped back to take this photograph, a young man stepped forward (into the frame of the photo), staring intently. I waited patiently, but he seemed to be unaware that he was blocking my shot, and he gave no indication of moving. After a minute or two, I asked him politely if he could step back while I took my picture.

“Is the train leaving now?” he asked, in a somewhat anxious tone.

No, I didn’t think so, I told him. “But soon.” (And not until after I had taken my picture and removed my locomotive from the running board! I had obtained the engineer’s permission before placing my prized possession in such a precarious position).

“Is the train leaving now?,” he repeated, leaning forward just a bit, arms flexed ever so slightly.

Then it clicked. “Hi,” I said. “What’s your name?” He gave his name – we’ll call him Eli (not his real name). I opened up a simple conversation with him: How old are you? Where do you live? Do you like trains? Eli responded politely, frequently interjecting his initial question (“Is the train leaving now?”), to which I repeated the same reassurance: “Not yet, but soon.” Read the rest of this entry »

Out on a limb

Enmeshment, continued.

Dr. Coplan reviews the case of Dee Dee and Gypsy Blancharde, and draws parallels to Nancy and Adam Lanza.

Do you ever get the feeling of déjà vu (“I’ve seen this all before”)? Do you ever hope that you are wrong? I’ve been having both of these feelings today.

I’ve been blogging about Adam and Nancy Lanza, their probable enmeshment (a condition in which one individual “takes over” the life of another), as well as the fact that Nancy Lanza claimed a self-invented diagnosis of Multiple Sclerosis and represented Adam has having a non-existent seizure disorder (go here and here). Whether she actually believed these things to be true, or whether her motives were more conscious and explicitly manipulative, we do not know. Thereby hangs the difference between malingering and Munchausen Syndrome (or, in the case of her representation of Adam, Munchausen Syndrome by Proxy). In either case, it’s pretty clear to me that mom was the driving force behind events – until the very end. Adam had been so cut off from the outside world by his mother, that the only way he saw to free himself was “to shoot his way out”. That doesn’t explain why he went on a rampage at a nearby elementary school; for that we have to look at Adam’s own neurodevelopmental and neuropsychiatric issues. But his rage toward his mother can be accounted for as a reaction against years of parent-child enmeshment (which has been described by researchers as “emotional incest” .) Read the rest of this entry »