Chapter 04: Developing an Ability to Deal with Psychological Turbulence

Chapter 04: Developing an Ability to Deal with Psychological Turbulence

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Description

In this chapter, Dr. Holleman talks about graduating from Apex High School [1973] and attending Harvard University. Dr. Holleman explains how he made that choice, unusual for his community. Next, Dr. Holleman explains more about the dynamics in his family. Growing up in this environment, he says, enabled him as a counselor to treat people with personality disorders and depression.

Identifier

HollemanWL_01_20170412_C04

Publication Date

4-12-2017

City

Houston, Texas

Topics Covered

The Interview Subject's Story - Personal Background; Personal Background; Character, Values, Beliefs, Talents; Influences from People and Life Experiences; Formative Experiences

Transcript

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Well, tell me a little bit about—I feel like we're kind of aiming toward that story. Take us there. So how did your interests evolve when you were a young person? What were the subjects you were interested in studying? How were your talents evolving?

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

What I did not have a talent for was science. And that's the ticket to medical school. When I was a freshman in college, I was thinking about medicine. And I remember I struggled with chemistry, freshman chemistry. And after that, I said, "I'm not pre-med." I made a C. And that pretty much—it would take a lot of work to overcome that. I couldn’t imagine organic chemistry if I was struggling with regular chemistry. So—

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Were you disappointed in that?

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

I think it was a reality check for me. I think I'd been to this tiny rural high school where not even that many kids went to college. And I was—did well there. And then I go off to college, and I'm taking chemistry with a bunch of really smart people, most of whom have already studied half the stuff we studied in the course in high school, you know?

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Yeah.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

You know, and the stuff I had studied in high school didn't really prepare me for that.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

And then for the record, tell me about where you went to college.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

So I graduated from Apex High School in 1973. I was one of 99 graduates, and in this rural farming community. Wonderful place to grow up, but not the most academically. And then I went to Harvard. So that was quite a jump for me.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

And how did that happen?

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

I would credit my brother. My brother was three years ahead of me. He had been in a summer enrichment program that the State of North Carolina had at the time called the Governor's School. It was a really good program. And one of his teachers said, "Everybody here should apply to at least one school out of state, just to expand your horizon. You don't have to go there, just apply there." So my brother said, "Okay, I'll apply to Harvard." And the funny thing was, the guidance counselor at the school said, "No no no, that's a waste of time," basically. But he said, "No, that's what I'm going to do." My brother was very stubborn. And he got in. So after he got in, I really had to—I was very competitive with him. I did everything for the next three years to try to get in there, and I got in. Yeah.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Were your parents worried about your going so far from home? Or were there any kind of assumptions about what would greet you, going to Boston?

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

I think our dad was really proud of us. And he had to pay for it all, but he was very—he never complained about that at all. I think he was really proud. He had always hoped we'd go to Wake Forest. That's where he went, for undergraduate and law school. And my mother, actually, her nurse anesthesia program was at Wake Forest as well. So Wake Forest was a school we were pre-destined to go to. And when my brother got into Harvard, it kind of threw everybody for a loop. He had already received graduation gifts with Wake Forest on them, like, blankets. My mother, I don't quite understand this, but she made him give those gifts back. Saying, "If you're not going to Wake Forest, you can't accept the gift."

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Huh.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah. That's my mom. And mom was—it was very hard for my mom. She really—this is a whole other story, but when my brother left for college, my mother really kind of lost it. I think she felt kind of abandoned, that sort of thing. I don't really understand it to this day. But she struggled with abandonment issues. It went back to the harshness of her childhood. And you would have thought that she—part of her was proud of us, but another part was wishing we'd stayed closer to home.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Did growing up in a family like that—I'm just—a lot of people that grow up in families like that learn to be pretty sensitive to emotional currents, and read people.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Oh, yeah. I think—when I think about me going into mental health, being a family therapist, I mean, there are several reasons for that. One is, quote, "growing up in a psychiatric hospital," I was exposed to severe mental illness. My earliest memories are people who have thought disorders in a psychiatric hospital. Who has that? Secondly, because of my mother's difficult family situation, she had family members who had severe psychiatric illness, and I was exposed to that. Sometimes they would live with us. So I was never put off by that. I was familiar with it. But then my mother's own challenges, I was very familiar with that. I think in the terms of—in family systems terms, in a way, I was a spousified child; I was sort of my mother's counselor, in a way, as I grew up. My father, the big event—the other big event—one was my brother going off to college. And then at the time my brother went to college, my father was getting really sick. And just a month after he went to college—I think my mother must have known this, and my father kept refusing to see the doctor. So he went to see the doctor in October of that year, a month after my brother had left, and was diagnosed with acute lymphocytic leukemia, and told that, "We will try to keep you alive for a month. You need to get your affairs in order, and we're very sorry." He wound up living for 21 years. He was one of the first miracles of what I would call—I'm not a physician, but what I would just call the "cocktail chemo approach," that actually Dr. Freireich [oral history interview], Dr. Frei, here at MD Anderson, developed. So when I came to work here, I thanked Dr. Freireich for saving my dad's life, indirectly.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Wow.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

And he had some funny things to say about it. So my father went to Duke for treatment and his doctor turned out, Dr. Silberman, had been Dr. Freireich's fellow at the NCI. And he did the cocktail treatment, and my father was sick for the next 21 years off and on, but he survived. He wasn't the healthiest you could be, but he survived and functioned quite well. So I think my mother had kind of a dual crisis. He lost her oldest son, he went far away, at the time that her husband was, she thought, dying. And so then at that point, I'll never forget, the day that my dad got this diagnosis, after her trying for about a year to get him to go to the doctor, he said, "I haven't seen a doctor since World War II and I don't need to see one now." This is a Southern male thing. So he finally goes. He called, or the doctor called, I'm not—the doctor was a surgeon in Raleigh. My dad kept refusing to see the doctor, but she talked him into seeing a doctor who was a surgeon, who wasn't the appropriate one to see at all, but it was somebody my father knew socially. And he was willing to see him. He did the bloodwork up and just called my mother and said, "I'm sorry, his white count is off the charts. He has no platelets. This is obviously acute leukemia. There's no real good treatment for it." It turns out he was at the very beginning of this cocktail treatment. So when she got that call, before she went to meet him at Duke, she gave me this little speech. She said, "It's you and me now, and you've got to take care of me." I was, like, 13, 14 years old.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Right.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

I didn't—I wasn't really ready for that. But after that, she really had conversations with me that she probably shouldn't have, and should have had with him. So in a way, I became closer to her. But on the other hand, to be honest, she treated me the way you might treat a spouse. She was also—could be really negative toward me, too. She had a love-hate relationship with me. Then when I went off to college and went far away, it was very difficult for her. That was her challenge. But everything I told you previously was also true.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Sure.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

She was a very strong, successful—in the professional world, she was incredible. And when she retired from that, she got involved in political and civic activities, and took on leadership roles and was very effective. She did some amazing things.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Well, that's the amazingness of people. They're so complicated.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah. Exactly.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Something very contradictory.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Yeah. And being in her household, I knew that side of her. Most people didn't know that side of her.

Tacey A. Rosolowski, PhD:

Well, and it teaches you that people in general have sides, and that's an obviously very important thing for you to know, as you became a professional.

Warren L. Holleman, PhD:

Sure. Yeah. When I went into—became a counselor or a therapist, it was interesting that the two types of clients that most people did not want were clients who had personality disorders, like borderline personality, that kind of thing. And then the others, the person who's depressed and suicidal. And I found I gravitated toward those. For about 10 years, I loved having those types of clients. I eventually got tired of it, or just fatigued by it. But I found that I had skills in that area. And I think that my mother gave me those skills.

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