AIRED: April 6, 2020
SPECIAL GUEST: Deborah A. Lott
Don’t Go Crazy Without Me tells the tragicomic coming of age story of a girl who grew up under the seductive sway of her outrageously eccentric father. He taught her how to have fun; he also taught her to fear food poisoning, other children’s infectious diseases, and the contaminating propensities of the world at large.
Alienated from her emotionally distant mother, the girl bonded closely with her father and his worldview. When he plunged from neurotic to full-blown psychotic, she nearly followed him. Sanity is not always a choice, but for the sixteen-year-old, decisions had to be made and lines drawn between reality and what her mother called her overactive imagination. She would have to give up beliefs carried by the infectious agent of her father’s love.
Saving herself would require an unconventional reading of Moby Dick and entry into the larger world of political activism as a volunteer in Robert F. Kennedy’s Presidential campaign. After attending his last stop at the Ambassador Hotel the night of his assassination, she would come to a new reckoning with loss and with engagement beyond the confines of her family. Ultimately, she would find a way to turn her grief into love.
ABOUT DEBORAH LOTT
Deborah A. Lott studied English Literature and Film at UCLA, where she also received a less formal education in 2nd wave Feminism and political activism. After working in publishing in Boston, MA, she continued her editing career with Peace Press, a collectively organized printer/publisher dedicated to advancing the causes of social justice, Feminism, and environmentalism. Her projects there encompassed learning about the Zen of the piano, eating wild herbs alongside the Los Angeles River, howling with the wolves at Deena Metzger’s, and spending a day with Black Panther pioneer Huey Newton. She went on to serve as a contributing editor to Psychiatric Times, and as Senior Consulting Writer/Editor for the UCLA/Duke University National Center for Child Traumatic Stress.
As a reporter for Psychiatric Times, Lott became fascinated by the dynamics in the psychotherapy room and the privileged language of psychotherapy practice. Lott interviewed several hundred therapy clients and noted therapists about transference and boundary dilemmas in psychotherapy. Her years of research led to her first book, In Session: The Bond Between Women and Their Therapists.
