| Kevin McCready Memorial |
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 "Light a candle of truth and decency and let those who want to change the way they think come to you." Kevin McCready A note from Peter Breggin to those who love Kevin McCreadyKevin is gone, I've been told, and it's true I haven't heard from him in a few days. Yet I feel his continuing presence as if he were larger than ever in my life. More than anyone else in our movement, Kevin McCready has led the way in creating drug-free, morally sound, voluntary, effective therapeutic approaches. His San Joaquin Psychotherapy Center is thriving. He is funding and guiding the creation of a similar drug free therapy center in San Francisco. He is doing the most important work of all of us. He is the least dispensable among us. And now they tell me he is gone at forty-eight years old. Kevin trained many people. He educated others. He established how to run a clinic for others to follow. He helped keep together the members of the International Center for the Study of Psychiatry and Psychology (ICSPP). He was leading the Center into the arena of alternative approaches to biological, materialistic psychology and psychiatry. He was our greatest hope for offering caring therapeutic alternatives. If Kevin weren't still so alive in my heart, this would be a time of crushing disappointment and inconsolable loss. Instead I feel as if I've entered into an eternal discourse with him, not so much about psychology and psychiatry as about life. This was a man whose enormous spiritual depth was matched only by his whimsical humor. I'll never forget the moment in our living room that he informed us that he was suffering from a case of "independent thought disorder." It remains impossible for me to think of him without smiling. Perhaps unalloyed sadness will befall me soon. I am still basking in his life. Kevin was trained as a psychologist and he loved the field. For many professionals, that becomes their identity?psychologist, psychiatrist, etc. That typically becomes a person's identity but for Kevin his identity remains being a man, being a husband and father, being Irish Catholic, being a Boston Red Sox fan, and simply being honorable. Professional identities can congeal like cement around our feet but Kevin pulled loose and danced free?free to pursue whatever was best for his profession and his patients. At the same time, he never lost sight of loving his wife, Karin, and their two children, Daniel and Meaghan. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is as threatening to most men and women as risking rejection from their peers, their fellow professionals. Ordinary people will risk their lives in combat and sacrifice their lives to save victims from burning buildings. But only a handful of people become willing to pursue what's right at the risk of their professional identities. When, as in Kevin's case, his economic future was constantly in jeopardy, hardly a man alive will stand on truth and ethics. Except for the support of our group, Kevin often felt he stood alone in his profession. At times he was openly abused. Kevin was one part pure courage and one part pure determination, one part lover of God and one part family man, one part colleague and one part dear friend, one part leader and one part therapist. I don't pretend to know how many parts God put into making up the person known as Kevin while he was on this earth but the sum total was one of the most remarkable men I've ever known or loved. My wife Ginger worked closely with Kevin when she managed the journal, the newsletter, the conferences, and the list serve through which Center members communicate as a group by email. This week she collected some of his gems from the list serve. Kevin was one of our most eloquent spokespersons on the limits and hazards of drugs. He wrote in the list serve: I do not need to know details about any psychiatric drug in order to understand that it is neither necessary nor benign. Emotional problems cannot be treated with chemicals any more than rocks can be cured with love (although I did once cure a ham with sugar). It's like being asked if it is OK to beat your children with an aluminum alloy bat. I don't need to know exactly how they manufacture it or the relative size of the bruises it leaves to know that I am not going to recommend it. He clearly defined the difference between chemical restraint and treatment: What is no good is approaching problems in living via a reductionist, disease model. Once we abandon this model (or at least orient to striving to abandon it) then the question about whether or not to take a sleeping pill, a drink or a Valium are secondary. Once we realize that restraint is not treatment we will let people decide fully informed whether or not they want to live their lives intoxicated. But it will not be called therapy. If someone wants to cope with life by taking the risk of ingesting a stimulant or depressant drug I say they are welcome to try. (They are not welcome to impose that risk on others.) What we have to offer is the opportunity to assist people to work on their emotional lives, their personal conflicts, their behaviors, their souls. This is incompatible with using drugs that suppress our humanity. Kevin never preached to his clients and his San Joaquin Psychotherapy Center was entirely secular in it orientation but Kevin's spirituality informed every therapeutic act. When asked on the list serve his thoughts on the nature of hallucinations, he responded, "I think the fragility of the human ego is of necessity buffered from the direct experience of the divine. I think psychosis is a state in which either the buffer has thinned or the ?vox Dei' is too forceful or compelling." On another occasion, he wrote of his psychotherapy center, "We create an environment for the human psyche to grow productively from its suffering. This is why we have been so successful." Two years ago Ginger and I pulled back at some distance from our years of total commitment to our reform work and ICSPP. For a time we also withdrew from some of our closest friends including Kevin. Thankfully we got back together at our October conference. Only then we learned that Kevin was recovering from a heart attack. He had long communicated to us his sense that like others in his family he would die young of a heart attack but we hoped that he had dodged the bullet and would move on with his life. Then came the abrupt and hopefully painless end. I feel truly blessed to have been in communication with Kevin by phone several times in the last few days before he died. The last time I talked with Kevin shortly before his death, I asked him to remind me about some of his favorite authors and he mentioned C. S. Lewis. After we heard about his death, Ginger found a book that Kevin had given her, Mere Christianity by C. S. Lewis. Kevin had given the book to her as a source of comfort after the death of Steve Baldwin, the British psychologist who was killed in a train wreck in Scotland, another loss of another friend and indispensable person who was much too young to go. And that reminds me of yet another of our friends and leaders who left us so much too early, patient advocate Rae Unzicker who died after a painful struggle with cancer. But mostly, Kevin's loss brings up the recent death of Loren Mosher, the great researcher and therapeutic innovator, the larger than life supporter of any and all victims of psychiatric oppression, whose relatively long and extraordinary active life we celebrated at our most recent ICSPP meeting. I'm told that our next annual meeting will be dedicated to Kevin. Perhaps then I'll be ready to cry with my friends and colleagues; right now he still seems alive to me. Kevin you're not gone; we're still hanging out with you. Thanks for still being here for all of us. As I've said so many times before, "Hi, Kev, what's doing?" ------------------------------------------------ Kevin' Eulogy... LET'S SING PRAISES ABOUT KEVIN MCCREADY. SOME PEOPLE WALK WITH THEIR NOSE IN THE AIR, OTHERS WALK LOOKING DOWN. KEVIN MCCREADY WALKED WITH A BOUNCE IN HIS STEP. WITH A CUP OF COFFEE IN ONE HAND AND TOSSING M&M'S IN HIS MOUTH WITH THE OTHER HAND. THIS BOUNCE IN HIS STEP WAS STRIKING. BECAUSE HOW CAN A MAN WITH THE RESPONSIBILITIES THAT KEVIN TOOK ON, TREAD SO PLAYFULLY THROUGH LIFE? THE ANSWER IS HIS LOVE AND HIS DEEPLY HELD FAITH. MOST CERTAINLY, KEVIN CARRIED HIS LOAD WITH GOOD-HUMOR BECAUSE OF HIS LOVE AND HIS DELIGHT FOR HIS WIFE KARIN, SON DANIEL AND DAUGHTER MEAGHAN. HIS WAS A WARM FAMILY AND A WARM HOME THAT HE GENEROUSLY SHARED WITH OTHERS. BESIDES THIS BIG LOVE FOR HIS FAMILY, KEVIN MOVED LIGHTLY BECAUSE OF THE STRENGTH OF HIS CATHOLIC FAITH. HE HELD HIS CONVICTIONS QUIETLY BUT HIS BELIEF IN GOD WAS AT THE CENTER OF HIS LIFE'S WORK. THIS LIGHTNESS OF STEP IN COMBINATION WITH HIS UNYIELDING VALUES WERE MIRRORED IN THE WAY HE THOUGHT. HE WAS CERTAIN IN BOTH THE CLASSICS AND IN PSYCHOLOGICAL THEORIES. AND HE WAS UP ON EVERY POPULAR TV SHOW AND FILM OUT THERE. MANY OF US WILL RECALL THE CONVERSATIONS IN WHICH KEVIN MOVED FROM KARL JUNG TO THE TV CARTOON CHARACTERS, THE SIMSONS TO THEN BREAK INTO AN OLD IRISH SONG TO GET HIS POINT ACROSS. NOT TO MENTION HOW HE ATTEMPTED TO EXPLAIN THE WORKINGS OF LIFE BASED UPON HIS DETAILED ANALYSES OF THE AMERICAN FAIRYTALE THE WIZARD OF OZ. HIS IS REALLY KIND OF A SIMPLE STORY WITH AN ADVENTUROUS END. HERE IS THIS BOY FROM BOSTON COMING ACROSS COUNTRY TO FRESNO TO STUDY PSYCHOLOGY AT CALIFORNIA SCHOOL OF PROFESSIONAL PSYCHOLOGY HE GRADUATES, MARRIES, FORMS A FAMILY AND BECOMES A GIFTED THERAPIST PRACTICING SUCCESSFULLY FOR MANY YEARS IN FRESNO. AND THE STORY COULD EASILY HAVE ENDED THERE. THEN HE HAD THIS DREAM OF SETTING UP A CLINIC SPECIALIZING IN TRADITIONAL PSYCHOTHERAPY; THAT IS TALK THERAPY WITHOUT THE USE OF PSYCHOTROPIC DRUGS. NOT A POPULAR OR ACCEPTED NOTION IN THIS DAY AND AGE OF TELEVISION ADS WITH ANIMATED CHARACTERS WHO EDUCATE US THAT DEPRESSION ARISES FROM AN IMBALANCE OF CHEMICALS IN THE BRAIN. WOULD, THAT IT WERE SO SIMPLE. DREAMERS, WHO DO NOT JUST DREAM BUT CREATE THEIR DREAMS, ARE FORMIDABLE PEOPLE. THEY ARE STRONG, STUBBORN, COMMITTED AND FOLLOW THEIR FAITH WITHOUT COMPROMISE. THEY HAVE AN INNER COMPASS THAT KEEPS THEM ON COURSE. KEVIN CREATED AND MAINTAINED HIS CLINIC SAN JOAQUIN PSYCHOTHERAPY CENTER AGAINST ALL ODDS. WHAT WAS UNIQUE ABOUT KEVIN'S CONTRIBUTION WAS NOT IN THE WAY OF BOOKS OR ARTICLES; IT WAS IN CREATING A SPACE FOR THE WORK ITSELF. SAN JOAQUIN PSYCHOTHERAPY CENTER BECAME ONE OF THE ONLY PLACES IN THE U.S. TO ACTUALLY TREAT INDIVIDUALS WITH A RANGE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL AND PSYCHIATRIC ISSUES THROUGH TRADITIONAL PSYCHOTHERAPY. AND THAT WAS KEVIN. HE WAS BOTH PLAYFUL AND SERIOUS, DEEPLY RELIGIOUS AND PROFOUNDLY DOWN TO EARTH. IN HIS PRESENCE, YOU KNEW THAT HE COULD BE ABSOLUTELY TRUSTED TO MAINTAIN HIS INTEGRITY AND HIS COMMITMENT TO SOUL WORK WITH EVERY PERSON HE WAS IN RELATIONSHIP WITH. THERE IS A SAYING THAT WHEN PEOPLE DIE, THEY REMAIN IN THE HEARTS AND MEMORIES OF THOSE THEY TOUCHED IN LIFE. ON SOME PEOPLE, THIS SAYING DOES NOT ALWAYS HOLD. BUT TODAY, WITH THIS MAN, IT IS TRUE. WE WILL ALWAYS FEEL IN OUR HEART AND SEE IN OUR MIND THOSE SMILING VIBRANT INTELLIGENT AND THOUGHTFUL EYES. I HAVE TOLD YOU THAT ONE OF KEVIN'S FAVORITE STORY WAS THE WIZARD OF OZ. IF HE WAS HERE, HE WOULD SAY TO YOU THAT HE CLICKED HIS HEELS AND HAS GONE HOME. Jack and Marij Bouwmans -------------------------------------------- ...if you are intimate with someone that means that you are vulnerable, that means that you can be hurt. Everyone wants to be safe. But there is not such thing as safe. There is secure, there is trust, but safe means dead, means de humanized. People that simply want to become safe from the pain, or make it to go away, or cover it up so it doesn't hurt them anymore lose their humanity. When you try to stop the pain, when that is the goal, then you are stopping the humanity. ...we cannot eliminate human suffering. A lot of the people say, I want the pain to go away. I've even had people come in and ask me to hypnotize them to make them forget. Others will actually pray to forget about that part of their lives. Well, that is praying to forget who you are. If you have been scarred in some fashion, that is who you are. You cannot eliminate that. You can grow around it, and it can add to the depth of you as a person, but humans are meant to struggle. We need to deal with the meaning of that struggle, not try to get rid of the pain. The goal is to become more and more human through the pain... ...emotional healing is not achieved through technologies but through the very things that make us human... intimacy, community, art, music, play (laughter). "if the glory can be killed, we are lost!" Kevin McCready ---------------------------------------------- Kevin was a dear friend who taught me that the "moral law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely the keys..." C.S. Lewis-Mere Christianity. What we exactly do with these people in waiting is less important that how we view and understand their suffering. Kevin's giftedness for understanding the human psyche, the idea of being human, and being able to lend aid to those in need was enlightening and a continual reminder of what we might be able to accomplish with the help of those things that make us human (i.e. our spirituality, harmony, love, empathy, community, artistic expression, etc...). Toby Tyler Watson ---------------------------------------------- I am heartbroken to hear that Dr. Kevin McCready has died. I shall grieve for his loss as he was one of the kindest, gentle, soft spoken humans I have ever met. He helped me, my son and several other humans who ran away from the systems and the barbaric chemical lobotomy treatments which were forced upon them and their families. Dr. McCready also had several clients he did not charge a fee because of their no-money status. He was an angel to most of us. He accepted my son who is still DAMAGED BY NEUROLEPTICS and treated my son with dignity and respect. I mean this man let my son attend his wonderful program even though my son was incontinent, drooling, pacing, rocking in place and detoxing from powerful toxic poisons thrust into his body and brain by so called "doctors" who pledge to do no harm. I will miss him dearly. I am lost knowing he will not be there for us anymore. Linda Valentine ---------------------------------- "Now cracks a noble heart. Good night sweet prince: And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!" How sad to lose Kevin. And how blessed we were to have him for a while. Tom Greening --------------------------------------- Kevin epitomized all that is good and decent in this profession. He was always the consummate gentleman. I loved seeing him at our conferences. Let us all be kind and caring to each other, because life can be too short. I shall miss him. Dave Stein -------------------------------------- I met Kevin at the ICSPP mini conference he organized in Southern California in 2001. He struck me as so down to earth and real, and his interns spoke so highly of him. I always wanted to go visit his center but never made it. Then when I joined the listserv, he sent me a personal email welcoming me, and mentioned he had come to the town where I live to testify on behalf of a young man who had been convicted for being at fault for a fatal automobile accident, despite the fact he had been diagnosed with bipolar disorder and improperly treated at the local mental health facility. Years later I have come to know this young man's mother. She was the at home midwife for my daughter born July 25, 2004. Her son is still in jail but she appreciated so much all that Kevin did for them, and said she spoke to Kevin just a week ago. How tragic it is that Kevin died at such a young age. Even though I hardly knew him, I feel very saddened. He helped so many and is truly someone we can all look up to and strive to emulate. Sarah Edmonds --------------------------------------- He was lots of fun to listen to. Very theatrical in his own way. I would strain to catch the wisdom, hanging on every word. The kind of speaker that has members of the audience asking each other, "What'd he say", continuously being surprised and enthralled. He would say something brilliant, pithy then turn away, take a few steps as if going somewhere and then suddenly blurt out another gem. You had to be on your toes to catch the wisdom. I visited his treatment center in Fresno and was struck by the casual, matter-of-fact nature of the place, nothing fancy, just a simple approach to helping people. I asked him how he financed the operation because it seemed like a major obstacle. "Oh we bill Medicaid and the State of California, get some grants, use interns." He said it as if there were nothing to it but I know there was. I encourage us all to do what we can to support Diane Kern and the others who are carrying forward his work as a living memorial to him. Al Galves ------------------------------------- To Dearest 'Storm Rider' Kevin, Kevin, Ginger and I had dinner the night before the conference started. Kevin, I think, knew that he was going to die soon. He was reflective of his life that night and talked about his profound beliefs in Christianity and especially his belief in an afterlife. I will always remember Kevin for some of the special insights he had into his own life and lives of others. He once reflected that "When your confronting a cyclone what do you do?....You have no choice but to ride out the storm!". The statement was in the context of dealing with someone in a totally psychotic/manic state. The best 'treatment' is to ride out the storm with them. What the system does now is label even in the first instance and mandate drug treatments that deny the underlying issues of human suffering and abuse behind the cry for help. Kevin had ridden out many storms. I will remember you always. Love, Brian (Kean) ------------------------------------- I have felt very sad since hearing of Kevin's passing last night. But, I've also felt to celebrate and give thanks for his life. Why? Because I was the first client at (and "graduate" from) the San Joaquin Psychotherapy Center. And, Kevin was my very good friend. Before working with Kevin, I was misdiagnosed as bipolar and schizophrenic, then drugged with a staggering psychotropic cocktail and told I would be medicated and need inpatient treatment for the rest of my life. I was also cautioned that, if I ever quit taking my meds, I would die. However, I knew this was all wrong and a fortuitous referral from a trusted Church leader led me to Kevin. I feel I must go where Dr. Breggin fears to tread: I believe Kevin was called of God to do what he did. And, I think Kevin felt that, too. We spoke frequently of God during my ~3 years with Kevin and it was always done in a knowing, reverent manner. In one instance, when I was overwhelmed with the magnitude of the changes that were occurring in my life, I called Kevin (through his answering service) at about 5:00 a.m. one morning and asked, "What is happening to me?" Kevin calmly replied, "You're beginning to trust God." That is a good man. Since working with Kevin, I have become the very proud father of 5 children and grandfather of 3. Though not free from life's vicissitudes, I have managed to accomplish some positive things over the last several years. From 1999 to 2002 I was Director of Marketing for one of Silicon Valley's top mergers and acquisition firms and also sat on the board of directors at one of the Valley's largest Non-profits. Today, I own a small management consultancy that helps business owners prepare their companies for sale in the private market. And, though I'm sure this would come as a surprise to the folks I was seeing before I worked with Kevin, I've done all this without drugs or labels. So, I want to add many of the good things in my life to Kevin's memorial. I expect he will be happy when his eternal account is settled. Why? Because I've been trusting God for a long time now and I think He loves the likes of Kevin McCready. And, I do too. Michael Robison |
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