I have recently finished my first book. The process of writing was challenging because it brought up traumatic, disturbing memories from my past. Also, the process was long since it included gathering the immense amount of documentation necessary to support the extraordinary events that led to my career as a psychoanalyst, psychotherapist, and an advocate for children’s rights.
From an early age, I took an interest in projects around the hospital which I thought could be improved. Even though the staff attempted to keep me away, I insisted on examining the laundry so I could fully understand the needs of those who worked there. It was quickly apparent that the working conditions were uncomfortable due to the air quality, temperature, and lighting. I noticed the dangers of the machinery and the difficult conditions for the workers, and I raised these issues with my father. Whatever topics I addressed with him, he supported me and acted on my suggestions to make improvements.
Extraordinary Childhood
My own developmental roots led to my following a nontraditional path in my learning as well as in my independent assessment of situations and my tendency to speak truth to power.
My family of origin was Russian Orthodox Jews who fled to the United States. In their tradition, men grew up to be rabbis and pray while women worked and raised children. Both my father and his older sisters became physicians. Because religious prejudice interfered with access to hospital privileges in the community they had come to call home—Jamaica Queens, New York—the three siblings built Memorial Hospital of Queens. While Memorial Hospital began in a private house as a 240-bed hospital, it expanded over the years to a fully functioning institution with every department known to hospitals at that time.
I was born as the youngest of four. My oldest sibling, 18 years my senior, was dying of a non-malignant tumor that grew unrestrained and unseen behind her optic nerve. This invisible tumor caused intense, excruciating pain that doctors first attributed to psychological origins since the instruments that would have enabled them to detect her tumor had not yet been invented.
By the time doctors were able to diagnose her tumor, my sister was 21 and completely blind in both eyes. My sister had been an artist and designer of gorgeous clothes that she could no longer see or wear since the medications caused swelling in her brain and tremendous weight gain from the accumulation of fluids.
The doctors gave my sister new medications to manager her pain. The management of the drugs was not known and when the drugs were stopped precipitously, they caused her critical organs to shut down which caused her sudden death at the age of 22.
By the time my oldest sister died, my brother, who was 15 years my senior, was off at college. He went from there to medical school. My sister, nearly 12 years my senior, was also off studying in college and beginning her career in dance.
As an only child in a neighborhood of mansions and mature adults, I was preoccupied with books and spending time with my father. His original specially was general surgery but later expanded to general medicine. I spent time with him in his office where I also kept company with the nurses, lab technicians, and my father’s vast medical library.
Much of my time outside of school was spent at the hospital with my father. As I was able to wander the hospital on my own and explore every part of the facility, I imagined I would become as an integral part of this institution. My curiosity and learning came from my expectation that his hospital would become a critical part of my future and I would one day inherit it. My father approved and supported me in these aspirations.
It never occurred to me to doubt that my observations and my opinions mattered. My father’s support made me able to walk into new situations without fear of incursions into forbidden territory. Later, when I began training in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy, it never crossed my mind that I should be restrained from areas of education that I wished to pursue.
Eventually, the growth of the hospital created opportunities for my father that led to the sale of the hospital. The sale led to even more favorable expansion and development for the hospital. My life took a turn in a completely new direction.
Move to Manhattan
When our family moved from Queens to Manhattan, New York, I was almost a teenager. I chose an independent path—managing my own interests and education. While I attended a progressive private school that afforded an excellent high school education, I also followed my own interest to pursue additional courses as well as music, dance, and volunteer work.
I independently arranged for my own early admission to New College of Hofstra, which offered me a unique independent study program that allowed me to develop a concept of clinical care that would enable me to purse the psychiatric treatment of children. I completed my four years of course work in three years while also getting married, working, and beginning graduate school. More at My Life As a Resume.
A Challenging Career Choice
At the time of my training, most women were not pursing the challenging, unfashionable work of psychoanalysis. Age prejudices also interfered with my ability to seek training, as I was considered too young, even though I was married and had completed my first level of graduate school.
Traditionally the institutions of learning in the area of psychoanalysis were only open to men who had MDs and then PhDs. I did not wish to purse a PhD in Social Work or psychology as those were not relevant to the context of the clinical work I desired to pursue.
Undaunted, I found a path to the training I desired through work at New York State Psychiatric Institute / Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. There, my skills and work were supported in ways that benefitted me throughout my career as a as a psychoanalyst, psychotherapist, family therapist, and mediator.
My Life as a Whistleblower
My first experience with any public controversy came when I confronted a failure in the inner workings of the family court system in Patterson, NJ. I was working as a volunteer advocate for a family struggling with critical, life-threatening crises precipitated by the failure of the court system to protect them.
Prior to my explosive confrontations with the court system, I had a long, successful track record of taking on issues that needed to be addressed. In graduate school, I had been the one addressing the organic issues endemic to living and working in a community. It was natural to me to unearth needs and work to make sure members of the community had access to Head Start, family planning, and programs to assist those struggling with alcohol and narcotics.
As a student, I had established connections with programs that could provide special research and treatment to patients through the National institute of Health that helped as a resource to the hospital. While there was initial resistance from expanding beyond the hospital’s own resources, that was easily overcome.
The fact that an institution or organization may have considered an area I addressed as controversial did not dissuade me from taking on an issue and seeing it successfully resolved.
After such a track record both in school and for 37 enjoyable, successful years of private practice, I thought I could expect a rapid resolution to the problems of what seemed to be clear violations to the care and protection of children as well as definite injustice being carried out by family courts.
Jill Jones Soderman is the Executive Director of The Foundation for Child Victims of the Family Courts (FCVFC)
To get help and find out who is Jill Jones Soderman, email info (at) jilljonessoderman.com. You can also call 866-553-6931.
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