David Reimer Psychology Paper

As a young child, David had a loving family, his Mommy, his father and his two brothers. By the time he was seven, he was being starved and abused by his mother. In his life, David had to face many challenges. One of which is having to play his mother’s “games” that left him half dead. He would also get punished for being a “bad boy” when he never did anything. Later, he had enough courage to tell someone, his 4th grade teachers at Thomas Edison Elementary School.

The association of homosexuality with filth begins in childhood for David and most certainly in his relationship with his father. His identity confusion can be seen from early on as he mentions: “I was in full flight from him. I did not want him to know me. I did not want anyone to know me” (Baldwin 16). Indeed, David’s father install in him from the very beginning the notion of a white, heterosexual, masculine American male. He wants his son, whom he addresses as “Butch” to “grow up to be a man” (90) and not “a Sunday school teacher” (15). The “teacher” to which his father refers to can be understood as a threat to masculinity because “the teacher” is almost surely a woman and he wishes only a life of “butch” for his son. This notion surfaces

David Peter Reimer was a Canadian boy born in Winnipeg, Manitoba on August 22, 1965. David's parents noticed he had an unusual way of urinating. He was diagnosed with Phimosis at approximately six months of age. David was taken to the hospital at eight months for the standard procedure of circumcision. During the procedure, the physician accidentally burned David's penis far beyond surgical repair. The cause was due to an electrocautery needle that was used instead of the usual scalpel. After the unfortunate procedure, a psychologist named John Money, who oversaw the case, suggested David have a sex change performed to “fix” the problem of the burnt-off penis. David's parents were distressed and were uncertain whether or not to go along with the sex change. They eventually decided to agree with the procedure after constant persuasion from John Money and other medical staff. David ended up having the sex change while John Money selfishly oversaw the case and used David Reimer as a private study. His belief was that

David was always a type of person inclined to be melancholy. He was always a religious person. He made sure that he did everything right, because he was afraid of death. He performed all the duties of religion without a true conversion.2

Aaron H. Devor gives very persuasive evidence that Gender identity is something that has been

David is a 1980 graduate of Harvard Medical School, who after finishing his clinical and research responsibilities in 1984 moved to New York City to pursue a business career. Between 1980 and 1989 he was a principal of Bermil Industries, a Milch family-owned holding company created to manage the family’s assets. The company is involved with capital equipment manufacture and distribution, financing, real estate development, and other entrepreneurial activities.

Growing up, I never considered myself as truly talented. I would watch my friends as they excelled in sports or received their black belt after playing the hardest song on the recorder. At that age, they probably dreamed of becoming a professional athlete or a musician, but where did I stand in all of this? Everything I did was either subpar or mediocre. There was never a field or an activity that I dominated in (except limboing but that won’t get me anywhere in life). It wasn’t until one day when I saw my friend crying on our first day back from spring break, when I learned that I did have a talent after all. After consoling her, I learned that her grandfather had passed over the break; but I also learned that I have a raw talent for comforting others, talking to them, making them feel just a little bit better about life. As I reflect on this day, I know that my young, psychoanalytic self was born to be a psychologist.

In Psychology 101, you learn about a personal fable; something that I have not lost. I have always wanted to change the world that I was destined for greatness and teaching elementary school students gives me that power. In the words of Nelson Mandela, “Education is the most powerful weapon which you can use to change the world.”

By Richard Thripp for Prof. John Beltran, PSY 4604 sec. 0W58, Univ. of Central Fla., Sp. 2013

As Mike Singletary once said, “A player responds to a coach who has the best interest at heart.” This is true for me and the rest of my team whenever Greg Schwebach is coaching. He is an amazing person on and off the the field or court.

Psychology is the study of human and animal behavior. This study includes abnormal human behavior. You can't get very much more abnormal than David’s situation. This book demonstrates severe mental problems and the effects it brought about.

David's inauthenticity leaves him always feeling unsatisfied. He doesn't belong anywhere, not amongst heterosexual or homosexual. Everywhere he's a stranger. I truly believe that David knew deep down inside what needed to be done to finally become happy, but he also knew that this was a decision he could not live with. If there was such a thing as a pill to make him be the man his father wanted him to be, David would have taken it in a heartbeat. He wished to be apart of the American dream where he worked to support his good lady and their four delightful children as they lived happily ever after. Unfortunately, he did not

The journal I read was about obstetric ultrasound. This reading is explaining how technology has grown quickly from a very small detail to a specific detail. The author mainly focused on the use of ultrasound to know determine the child’s sex and how this innovation implies many other complicated consequences on people’s lives. She took two regions in the world (China and India) where people used to favor a male than a female. Now that the use of ultrasound is not only to protect the maternity and the prenatal child, people use it to determine the child’s sex. People in China and India for example does not need to see their female to consider them “unfortunate. Instead, they can abort the child if it is an unwanted sex. The author further explained

In 1966, a botched electrical circumcision left David Reimer (then named Bruce) without a penis. A malfunction in the doctor’s equipment (electro-cautery needle) caused the needle to burn Reimer’s penis from tip to base. The Reimer’s were left with a dilemma: a son with no penis. They visited several medical experts who assured them that penile reconstruction would prove worthless. The Reimer’s were devastated and did not know how to help David. One afternoon when the Reimer’s saw Dr. John Money, a so-called expert in sex reassignment, on television they contacted him and brought their son to see him. It would prove to be a tragic decision.

Is how aggressive an individual is determined only by his or her genes? Whether psychological and behavioral traits are purely determined by genetics, solely influenced by socialization, or a combination of both has been a highly debated topic within the field of psychology known as the “nature-nurture issue.” Today, although still disputed, a good number of psychologists and other scientists concur that genetics and the environment mutually influence and intermingle with one another (Myers, 2015). We can partially credit this fizzling-out of the nature-nurture debate to the discoveries made in twin studies. Twin studies are used to help delineate the genetic components of behavior and the socially and culturally influenced components (Myers, 2015). This type of study enables researchers to examine the extent to which genetics and environment have an effect on the development of traits and behavior. For example, in lecture, we learned that a common and natural experiment used in twin studies is to examine a set of twins who grew up in the same household and a set twins who grew up in separate households (K.W. Brown, personal communication, August 29, 2017).