Probing Questions for Psychiatrists

Dear Dr. Jerry Bobo and Dr. Nicodemus Watts--



I greatly enjoyed your probing psychiatric presentation on August 2, 2009, in San Diego, California, during the National Bar Association, which dealt with "Depression and the Black Lawyer."



I had indicated that I would write to you, rather than burden you with further questions. Hopefully, you've not completely forgotten me or our conversation.



During your seminar, I inquired whether either of you had read BLACK RAGE, by Grier and Cobb, black psychiatrists, or WRETCHED OF THE EARTH, or BLACK SKIN/WHITE MASKS by Franz Fanon, a black psychiatrist from Martinique.



I do not now recall your responses. My point was that multigenerational environmental racism affects our people deleteriously, (and epigenetically), I suspect, in every realm.



While writing this email, I was fortunate to run across a book, which further ties law and psychiatry together, by a California lawyer named Paul Harris. His vital book is entitled BLACK RAGE CONFRONTS THE LAW http://www.guerrillalaw.com/blackrage.html. Mr. Harris is a white law professor at New College in San Francisco. http://www.powells.com/biblio?isbn=9780814735923



Perhaps, his book may prove to be as valuable to you as it promises to be to me. I've already ordered it.



The real question I have for you is this: Is the "mind" in the brain or in the heart or some combination of the two or neither? I ask this, because I note that the word "brain" does not appear in the

Bible, while the word "heart" is fairly ubiquitous. Implicit in my question is whether there is necessarily antipathy between psychiatry and theology? Being an AME preacher, I'd like to know.



I am sharing this communication with Attorney Kamau King, President of the Men's Task Force, National Bar Association, whose prescience facilitated your presentation at our convention.



Respectfully,

Larry Delano Coleman, Esq.

Kansas City, Missouri