The first several involved a dig at my Great-Grandmother whose life I fictionalized in my story Susanna. They felt when she sufferred spousal rape on her wedding night to her first husband, she should have cried out and divorced him. Since the writers of these notes were both ministers I am surprized they don't know old testament law on rape. First there is no recognition of spousal rape. And second, general law reguarding rape in the old testament of the Bible says that a man who rapes a woman must marry her and never be able to divorce her as she is ruined (Deuteronomy 22: 28).
I give my ancestress great credit for being able to keep her head in such a terrible situation, and wait to later divorce this abusive first husband. If she had cried out -- she would have been stuck with that monster for a lifetime.
The second question had to do with what was the typical therapy for "Personality Disorders."
The typical therapy is to increase the person's self awareness of the quirk in their character and to devise ways to help mitigate its effect. For instance, you'd make a paranoid personality aware that paranoia might be clouding their thinking and try and get them to "self check" particularly in stressful stituations. You have a Dependent Personality self evaluate to see if they were being too demanding, etc.
Often this is very hard to do. Personality Disorders are often thought to be extremely difficult to treat, but in brief thats how is generally goes.
People asked what country I'm from (eg. country of origin).
Pennsylvania, USA. What country are you from?
Are you Catholic?
No, I'm not Catholic. Never have been. Neither are my parents. People ask me this a lot. I'm not sure why. My Step-mother is Catholic. Perhaps this is the reason for the question???
The last question dealt with some --probably racist --presumption that I was not a very good student. I was an Honor Scholar. I am lucky to be multi-talented and very bright. I did very well in school. I graduated from High School at 17, Got my BA in three years at 20, got a Masters in half the time usual, and ot a PhD in record time. This seems to confuse some less educated people who see the young age as indicating I quit High School!! No, I was 17 when I graduated from high school.
Have a good month!
Lil