Dighton Orvice MSW was the program administrator. He did not ever acknowledge the placements I obtained for clients at Lake/Sumter Mental Health Center and Hospital. Instead he criticized me for being “competitive.”

This occurred in the year 1989 when the USSR was collapsing; socialism was failing and free market economies were flourishing. BUT there in Leesburg, Florida a tiny bit of Marxist doctrine survived in the community mental health system.

Egalitarianism and mediocrity were the underlying principles of organizational culture. There was a case manager there who had a master’s degree from Rollins College—the oldest college in Florida. She was paid six or seven dollars per hour.

There was an MSW case manager there in the same chronic stabilization unit. Lana Taylor was the name. She was bored and unmotivated. Social workers in college are trained to due an elaborate social history on their clients. All she did was fill out a two page form with pen and ink. No links to the field’s literature. No links to resources. Nothing but short answers to short questions.

I’d produce a type written social history about the clients past, the social environment, links to Freud, or Erikson on the life cycle, or Virginia Satir’s book on the family system. Then Lana Taylor was assigned to teach me how to due the short form!!!

The MSW Dighton Orvice never even read anything I wrote. Once, in a final meeting he told me that my pursuit of knowledge was “wrong.”

He said, “When I was a student I was interested in knowledge. But not anymore. You must stop your focus on knowledge” and he shook his head back and forth. As he shook his head, I remember the long curls of his blond hair, swayed back and forth. (He got his hair curled at a hairdresser I think)