John Pachankis and Jack Drescher

00:01 My name is John pachankis. I'm 38 years old today is June 10th, 2019. Where in Manhattan New York and I'm interviewing. Dr. Jack Drescher. Who's the mentor of mine and whose likes working career? I very much admire.

00:17 I'm dr. Jack Drescher. I'm 67 years old and today is June 10th, 2019. Where in New York Manhattan New York, and I'm with John pachankis who is a mentor of mine.

00:37 This is exciting to get to an interview you today. I'm about you and your your life and your lights work.

00:46 Is your 67 who is your that means you're born and what year I was born in 1951 and 251. Where were you born? I was born not far from here in lower Manhattan and a hospital that no longer exist. Call Manhattan General and and I know a little bit about your family background and I know that your family wasn't born how many York or in the u.s. My parents are refugees from the Holocaust who were born in Poland and they came to the states in 1949. They were actually living in Williamsburg Brooklyn before it was trendy Williamsburg Brooklyn and they were living there when I was born but the doctor who delivered me practice out of a Manhattan Hospital

01:32 Until they traveled to Manhattan to give birth, I guess so, I don't remember the events that well from there. Tell me a little bit about your relationship with your parents growing up.

01:51 That's a complicated question. Well, my parents were refugees. They've been Refugee that fled the Nazi invasion of Poland in 1939 and fled to the Soviet Union where they stayed for about seven years and then after returning to Poland flag Poland where they stayed for about six weeks and then found their way to the Western allies occupation of Europe and we're in the refugee camps in Germany in the womb in Bavaria when my older brother was born in several cousins were also born there and they came here in 49 and like many immigrants and refugees that you know, they brought their culture with them and I was being raised to be an American as well as to be, you know part of their culture. So the summer when we get we didn't get along it was because you know, we the children my brothers and I had very different ideas about how I live should unfold than our parents didn't terms of how they fit our lives should unfold would how did they think your life should unfold?

02:51 What what parts of their culture did they did they expect you to fall out while they wanted us to be religious? They weren't super religious, but they were religious enough and we were sent to Hebrew school. I went to seven years of what school, Tori which is Heber school after public school and we were expected to get good grades and we were expected to marry Jewish girls. Those were some of the expectations Well, you certainly upheld some of those expectations probably like you're a you're a psycho med school and your faculty appointments places in respected institutions Oliver New York. I don't think you married a nice Jewish girl. What did it which of those things? Do you know, which of those things do you feel like you look up to and which of those things do you think?

03:51 Caused some conflict between you and your parents. Well, my parents were very happy that I did well in school my younger brother. Also my little brother did good. Then he wound up getting a PhD in economics. So you can say that he did well in school but so is someone who did well in school that was okay. We're allowed to read anything that we wanted to read it with no limitations. They were not happy when they found out that I was gay. I had told mutual friends about myself and they told my mom who asked and they were not happy and it took him awhile to get used to it, but I would say, you know after a decade or so they were more comfortable with it. How old are you when your your mom asked if I was twenty-seven I was in medical school and I came home and she was acting kind of funny. So I wound up asking him friends and your mutual friends. I said, did you tell her what I told you? They said she asked you know, I should have said Jack is gay. Is he?

04:51 They thought you really wanted to do but you wanted to be sure that I wasn't it. How did she take the news not? Well, she told me that I have to see a psychiatrist to change my sexuality and I said to her mom. I'm going to be a psychiatrist. She went to see a rabbi in Borough Park Brooklyn. We lived in Brooklyn. I grew up in Brooklyn. She wants a rabbi who was known to work miracles. And so he she she said the rabbi wasn't there but she spoke to the sexton and he said to her. Well, you know when we see this we marry them off very quickly when they're young this of course is come a problem that the bite their Orthodox Community, you know in the ass years later.

05:33 When I did want to treatment first time might they asked if I was seeing a psychiatrist because I was gay and turns out I was thinking I was seeing a gay psychiatrist the lights to Nichols who's on the first openly gay psychiatrist New York City back in the early 80s, eventually, I would say maybe when I was 41, she told off a friend who was kept trying to make a match for me and she said to the Friends listen, he's 41. He lives with a guy. He's gay you get it. I think of that as my mom's coming out moment. I mean, it's some it's it can be a humorous from this perspective to to think of kind of the impossibility of of making you straight of having a rabbi work miracles on you put the message in post lyrics supposedly delivered to kids young adults has to take its impact and has to have a toll. What do you think that that impacted it was on you or on?

06:33 On any LGBT person think maybe you've seen in your practice who's heard that message I've over the years. I've treated a lot of people who come from religious communities Jewish Christian communities, even some Muslim patients and you know, it's really hard to go against the wishes of your community to come out to lose not just moving away from your religion is about moving away from your community so it can be very difficult. You know, I think it's really hard. You know, it's really hot. I think as a child of immigrants who in which we disagree with that parents immigrants about what the rules and regulations of everyday life should be maybe was a little bit easier that is I wasn't really, you know, growing up in the same small to Staples that they know they came from in in Poland. So we were already on different tracks, but for some people get comedian enormously difficult

07:29 What what what lessons did you learn from your parents that that that you take with you to the stay positive lessons about shapes Who You Are

07:43 Well, my mother was a very accepting person that turns out I mean that she is not that she was without prejudices but she was very open-minded. I think from it based on where she came from we grew up in a mixed Jewish Natalia neighborhood one of her best friends growing up and it was an Italian American woman, you know who lived across the hall from her my mother got along with everybody. She you know, my mother was not judgmental people want two things I've learned and I do couples treatment is I often think of something that she said, which is that every pot has a cover. So when I hear couples difficulties, it's not about a judgment about these two people, you know are trying to fit themselves together in their interrelationships. Oh my father I often think about in my organized self need paperwork is organized how my desk is organized cuz he was very organized in that way. So you not carry both of them inside me.

08:45 Who I'm

08:47 Who else do you consider to be in your family?

08:52 I have an older brother my older brother saw that my younger brother marry my sister-in-law an

08:58 My uncle Martin who lives in Florida we can have a lot of family. Most of our family was at my father's entire families parents aren't your sisters in the I don't know how many cousins were killed in the war in the Holocaust and then most of my mother's family went to Israel after the war so we didn't grow up with a lot of family. So but you know the family we have now, we're pretty close but they really made a Life Anew here for themselves and and I'm walking to you until world that they it was pretty mysterious and very different from the world in which they grow up but it sounds like they they Rose to the challenge. Well, I mean my parents live the American dream they came to America not speaking in English at all, including my brother who was 2 years old when they arrived they lived in a shelter in Greenwich Village for the first 6 months in the state, but like people came to America, you know, they said they worked hard and they encourage their children.

09:58 To work hard and study and be respectful and my and my house, you know teachers will always right even when they were wrong, you know, and so, you know respect authority and do what you're told and keep your head down. Those are some of the things that they communicated to us. What a what would you see any parallels between some of their challenges and successes as immigrants and some of the challenges that that you faced as a gay man?

10:30 I am I writing.

10:34 I've written about though what I call High Rockies of suffering, you know, and that we live in an age now and everybody tries to wrap themselves in some kind of victim status and the more victimized you are at the car your status because you suffered more so so in the hierarchy of suffering along those lines, I don't think my discomfort is a gay man in America can come anywhere close to what the experience but I have to say that my parents did not act like victims, you know, they did not they did not communicate to us that the way to get ahead in life is to portray yourself as a victim but to you know, try and make the best of things and think about what you going to do in the future.

11:18 That's the mentality must inform your work with with your LGBT patients.

11:24 It's a lot of whom you know, probably come to the treatment. I'm expecting that a lot of the sources of their difficulties in life might be a function of being LGBT, but it sounds like you've taken a really kind of resilient approach to yourself. How does that impact your work with with y'all to ET patient? Everybody comes into treatment LGBT or otherwise with a series of complaints and almost always those complaints have some legitimacy in a people have been treated badly at some point in their lives and what you need to have when you start treatment is a place where you can complain, you know, because I like to say when people ask me if you know, how are you doing this? I have no complaints and nobody listens to my complaints. But you know, what you want to have is a place where you can complain and feel that your complaints have validity and that's just the start of treatment. But in a treatment is not just about complaining treatment is also about what's the next step?

12:24 Next step is what he going to do next. Okay. Now that your complaint has been heard. All right. What do you do next? And when and how are you going to do it for yourself? And I won't say I've never said to a patient, you know, stop feeling sorry for yourself because I think you can feel sorry for yourself. As long as you like. You know, that's okay, but feeling sorry for yourself shouldn't get in the way of taking care of yourself and doing things for yourself that you need to do. So so I do think both my parents experience, you know, we have what we call intergenerational transfer of trauma, you know, and we so I feel you know, so we're all over traumatized by our parents experiences and my own traumas, you know dealing, you know where the straight world are things that have affected me, you know, but they haven't prevented me from getting on with my life and trying to enjoy my life and make the most of my life. What would have some of those challenges are comments been for you and being gay

13:20 Well, I grew up in the neighborhood. Where are you know Bensonhurst Brooklyn thing Saturday Night Fever where you know the particulars of the year of 7th grade fever as well. And you know, where being gay would have been open the gate would be very dangerous many the people from the old neighborhood. I still see some time. I'm trying to time, you know, they know I'm gay and everything's fine now but his kids it wasn't fine. So you had to hide nobody could know so having to hide of course being in the closet is neither one of the major trauma, I think for most people who have to hide whatever it is that they have to hide and so that is a trauma and then there's the trauma you experienced when you decide to reveal yourself and then you have to deal more openly with people's prejudices and certainly feels of Psychiatry and psychoanalysis have their shares our prejudices and I have certainly experienced some prejudices over the years. Although I would say not as bad as the generation before me, but I think

14:20 It was still a lot of prejudice when I began my training what?

14:27 What do you think are some of the kind of lasting impacts of of having to hide your sexuality? I'm growing up gay.

14:38 What one of the things I can become Leah Cruise in a lot of gay men and I work a lot of gay men over the years is that you you wind up to laying the socialization process that had her sexual kids usually begin in high school. And so that you begin so you see men in their twenties in the thirties acting like teenagers without any adult supervision. And so I think that's one of the disadvantages of having you know of having to hide is that you can't really begin to explore relationships and sexuality until you're older.

15:14 And M

15:18 You mostly see patients who are I'm the easy adults mostly what are some of the common characteristics that they bring to to treatment that they're they're struggling with

15:35 Related to to their to their sexual is sexuality a book 20 some-odd years ago. Quit cycling therapy in the gay man in one of the things I try to save me traduction is that the problems that gay people bring to treatment pretty much a parallel to the problems that everybody else brings into treatment gay-straight cisgender transgender. So there are some unique problem with people who are gay and they have to do with are they in the closet? Who are they who knows and who doesn't know sometimes closets or selective that is some people know and some people don't know what is what are the relationships with their families as a result, you know of coming out if they come from very religious backgrounds how marginalize might they be from the communities they came from which which is something doesn't just happen to gay people in religious communities, but it happens to a lot of gay people come from religious communities. So it's the marginalization I think having to hide did you ever

16:35 Hide in a professional closet when you were training to be an analyst or in any of your medical for I decided to come out right when I was playing for Psychiatry internship. So, you know what my feel you first or go to medical school, then you do an internship and you do a residency you then somewhere down the line if you want you could do psychoanalytic training. So with my internship only one person ass and one of my interviews about my personal life and when I said I was gay his first question was what how long is your longest relationship lasted and so I answered the question wrong and the interview went downhill from there and I did go home crying feeling like really bad about how it went other places. It was more like don't ask don't tell here in New York, sexuality have been taken out of the APA stack Gnostic manual 1973, but I didn't know that a New York the center of the opposition to that removal was in the psychoanalytic Institute.

17:35 And so in my residency, I was out as gay but my fellow residents knew I was gay my training directors knew that I was gay and that was not a problem there and I had supervisors who knew that I was gay. But when I decided I want to apply for psychoanalytic training in 1987-88 most of the mainstream institutes that accepted psychiatrist would not accept a no from the game and it's not that long ago. Was that 30 years? What do you think? This was Hades weren't great for LGBT people but Professional Organization probably know better than to discriminate against I mean, maybe not but if it sounds like there was widespread discrimination towards LGBT people on stairs definitely widespread discrimination. The the reasons are probably complicated psychoanalysis head hit it had reached its Zenith. Is it profession?

18:35 I think in the sixties maybe in the seventies and when they lost the battle of the American Psychiatric association about the diagnosis of homosexuality, they tended to circle the wagons and rather than the mainstream embracing what was going on in the rest of mental health. They they went off on their own path for about 20 years. And so that was a 20 years in which I was in psychiatric training in psychoanalytic training. I trained at the white Institute the William alanson white Institute here in New York, which had a quiet history of accepting openly gay people because one of its Founders Harry stack Sullivan was gay so there was a tradition but they didn't really want to publicize it at the time but they did accept me and I was accepted they are not that some of the other institutes where I didn't even apply because teachers in mind said, they won't accept you if you're openly gay.

19:23 Now it like today at least from my perspective. It seems like the mental health profession psycho-analysis included is like really LGBT. I mean we know that has real teeth people use therapy mental Services much greater rates than heterosexual people and that there's a there's professions to be made in the field to be made in supporting the needs of LGBT patient and you've been a big leader and getting psychoanalysis on board with that mission of making psychoanalysis Hospital Poland and therapeutic for LGBT people. What made you decide to take that on?

20:09 Who has the sense of Ethics question? I was in psychoanalytic training at the white Institute from 1988 to 1992. People would say things in the classes. Even the White is you know, which was open was teaching us a lot of psychoanalytic theories, which were very old never disputed. Nobody really challenged them. And so I began at the end of my training to I decided to write about it. So I wrote a paper and thank you when I finish the widest 292 they offered a prize for recent paper by a recent graduate. Should I wrote a paper on psychoanalytic attitudes toward homosexuality which one of the prize from The Institute a gay and I went to the graduation. I got a prize. I got a check to Wells nice, but even though the Institute wouldn't publish the paper.

21:02 And that was very interesting. So when I complain to the director of institution said, well, we saved the Patriot the prizes for a publishable paper. We don't say that we publish it and I quote exact one with the quaintest me in the people are unwilling to address, you know, what they really think and feel when they try to move this subject away. And so that the the editor of the end of the journal said we was to political term paper and this was a person who drink many political papers in psychoanalysis when I complain to them and I said, well, I was going to make it public if you know because I had publicize my winning the prize you know it to make themselves look good and it when I said that I was going to have them write a retraction of that publicity then they back down and they said okay you will publish the paper but I gave it to another Journal because I was sick of that and then want nothing to do with them. And that was really, you know, then I started writing, you know, one of the things that came out of my cycle analysis which went on while I was in

22:02 Riding in a few years after that was I became a writer and later and editor and so I wrote about six papers within two years and then I got a book contract to write my books like when I leave there in the game and and and then it became, you know, it was like, you know, the that the psychoanalytic house or Prejudice was based on oldies. Premises. And what really happened was that once you began to put some life on all their bullshit. I met you don't want to put the light on it, you know, they just withered way because it was really nothing there to that moves just prejudiced. There's no real science know facts just prejudices. Did you did you enjoy taking on the field?

22:49 I don't like bullies and there's people in the people who were in that area. We're mostly bullies. So yeah, I think I don't know. Enjoy is the right word. I'd say I think I did what I thought I had to do and really ended up shaping the field through through your ear work in an app to see well, I mean, I always think that my work was made possible by the generation that came before me, you know, which should I say the Stuart Nichols Bertram Schaffner people who were willing to step up and do things that needed to be done, you know, so without them because they the date that I had mentors who were able to do that. So that was really very helpful, you know, it was easier for my generation than the people trained 10 and 20 years before me.

23:40 Did you think you're the generation this training now or that strain 10 or 20 years after you has it? Has it easier?

23:48 Oh, yes, I think yeah, I think there's active recruitment of LGBT candidates, you know throughout cycle analysis, even the conservative American psychoanalytic Association has reversed itself, you know in the last 25 years and they open the welcoming they have a committee on gender and sexuality. They have a paper that gets a plenary talk. I mean this is a note that I definitely has been changed. What do you think some of your biggest career contributions are?

24:20 Well in 1997, I agree to take on the editorship of the Journal of gay and lesbian Psychotherapy, which had been founded about a decade earlier but had never really taken off the first two volumes to 10 years without it 8:00 issues. And so what I went up doing with a bunch of colleagues Joe Merlino and der kolk receipt, we basically got to we got the journal back on track. And so we just had got it out in a so that it became like for a year and then after 10 years I was able to hand it over to marry Barbara and Alan Schwartz who went on to do the journal for 5 years and then turned it over to fill the dollar in the Chris McIntosh Christmas now is the editor-in-chief. So I think the journal is now in his 22nd or 23rd and 24th year. So I feel like that's a major accomplishment because it provides

25:20 Why did The Forum because I don't believe that a person can do this by themselves. I mean, I mean it I wrote a book which is really great. But how many people read your book? How do you get your ideas disseminated? You need other venues, you know and then to wish to communicate your ideas and the journal was a good place to bring people who are not me but where like-minded who had something to say could bring about changes and I think that happened. What about in your clinical work? How do you see your what do you see your contributions Bang Theory work with your patients? I love seeing patients. I still see patients. I think seeing patients makes me feel good. I just something about being helpful. I think I'm still helpful to people and I really enjoy that so I've seen people change. I've seen people not change but I see people feel better and that's a very well, you know, I like being a doctor.

26:20 Feeling you said that you're still doing it like like you wouldn't be doing it. Well, you know, I know when America 65 you can start getting Social Security but in my field, well, I should say my men to a birch Hefner died in 2010 and he was 97 years old and he broke his hip unfortunately five years before he passed and he was homebound. He was blind he was deaf and when he passed away, I still had to find a psychiatrist for two of the patients that he was still seeing so you can go to 97 with all these disability, you know, so, I don't know. I mean the question is always one of how long should you working? When should you stop working? And I don't feel like stopping working good at it.

27:20 You accumulate more more time and more wisdom and more expertise. Do you do think that's been true for you? I think that's true. I think I'm a better therapist now than I was but I think I think Young therapist bring and that in there studies that show this as well that even therapist with less training and less experienced do very well because they bring the kind of fervor an energy, you know how to work that you perhaps diminishes overtime so but no, I mean I I hear things a little bit differently than I used to and I think I'm still good at it. I hope I'm so good at Geary still do mostly practice psychoanalysis or do do more short-term. One, two, three, four, five times a week 3 minute very very little of that going on. I seen most patients once and twice a week. I see patients when combination of medication and Psychotherapy is a psychiatrist. I'm able to provide both sometimes ICP.

28:20 Just for Psychotherapy and somebody else is doing their medication. And sometimes I see people just for medication. Somebody else's during Psychotherapy. I see couples families. I like where I did a lot of family work training when I was a resident and you like it. I like it. Yeah, I like family working. So, you know, it's like a lot of balls in the air and being able to hear different perspectives and I was very interested in early in my career working with more Disturbed patients patients with schizophrenia and more severe bipolar disorder. And those are the kind of patients wear family work is necessary as part of the treatment. Are you still writing? I am unfortunately still riding relationship. I like I love I discovered that. I love editing. I really like, you know, like I can I do a lot of bad things because that's how I read a paper or an opinion p.m. I just line at it as I'm reading it and so that I really enjoy but writing from scratch is

29:20 Very painful. I know I know and I don't know where it comes from but you know, but yeah, I don't enjoy writing. I mean I enjoy the latter part of writing paper that is what number fising things I've written then I enjoy but to actually start putting that all the ideas in the beginning is like pulling teeth. You know, I do a lot of riding. I feel the exact exact some of the accomplishments that you're most proud of in your in your personal life.

30:01 And my personal life I'm glad that I was able to have a good relationship with both my parents before they passed away. My dad died in 2003 and my mom died in 2016 and that we were in the you-know-what that whatever differences we had when I was younger, you know head over to work through and that we were able to be in a good place when the wind when they were gone. And so that I feel some accomplishment. I have two brothers who are come from a very different political Viewpoint than I do on things and we've had our differences over the years, but in recent years, you know, we are in touch with each other and I feel good about that and you know that we're closer than we used to be. So I guess family is you know it and you know, I have a partner 37 years who

30:52 I know I mean he deserves a lot of the credit for my accomplishments because I because he was more ambitious for me than I was for myself. And so, you know, I think I think I could not have done anything that I did without him.

31:09 37 years is a long time without its to the interview guy. Who said how long is my longest relationship lasted I can say there's going to be homophobic believe that you would be a 37 year old relationship when you were that age. I had no idea but you know, we both come from families where people did not get divorced. So, you know, and you probably didn't know other gay people have been together for Republican that models of gay couples who have been together for decades not until the 1980s professional gay people have been together for a long time and let me I know people who together 50-60 years and you know, and God bless them the things that your parents on.

32:09 Lifetime for the things I experience it's almost incomprehensible least from my perspective. The same is true for a completely different story and different Narrative of the sheer diversity of experiences in just the way that the world changes in that people's life course moves through this changed. The same is true for LGBT people in the 50s 60s and 70s. So much happened then before even the AIDS epidemic of marriage equality, etcetera, you you and body all of that and you just by virtue of having having been there. What's that been like the kind of diversity of experiences we live in that we live. I think we live in a better world. We think we live in a world where we can talk about things that couldn't be talked about and while they couldn't be talked about nothing to be done about it. I remember in 1993

33:09 When President Clinton wanted to lift the ban on gays in the military, there was a man episode of Nightline. They had some very angry General. So angry he was spitting about how disgusting it was to let gay people into the military and you know it within a week's time. They got rid of people like that. They weren't allowed to speak on the news. They had to have more polish speakers speaking their, you know Aunt I gave you the more polish than diplomatic way and that was a result of speaking about it. So I think that what has changed is that the genie is out of the bottle. You cannot put the genie back in the bottle even in Russia with a trying to do not going to put the genie back in the bottle says not going to happen in the United States. For example even want Evangelical Christians with seeing that young evangelicals because I haven't even talked about homosexuality don't have the same feelings about it that's their elders and they're much more accepting and they're not that interested in making this the issue of their Christianity there more in

34:09 Poverty, you know it in and and taking care of people so that I did that kid that's not going to go away because you can the more you talk about the subject than more people become desensitized, you know to the subject and they start thinking rationally about it.

34:27 You like when I ate some thirty years younger than you when I would even when I grew up in the 80s early 90s in the Deep South there were kind of two messages that a young kid people learned about themselves. And when was that you were going to hell and the other was that you're going to die of AIDS and that would be your just punishment you look through that are different place, but you have to the Arab before that where there's probably even less. Hope AIDS wasn't around then but there was still this message of your deviant your pathological. I mean in your own profession those were this with the messages and how did that how did that affect you? Well, I would say that you know that I didn't really get immersed myself in my profession until 1980. So everything that happened before I was more in the culture rather than in my profession, I mean medical school doesn't talk about sexuality at all of any type for the most part so it wasn't really, you know, something that came up there.

35:27 I think I think before before the 8th before age because you know, I saw my first case of a patient with kaposi sarcoma in the last month of my internship at St. Vincent's in Greenwich Village in June of 1981. And there was a it was before Friedman canes publish his findings about several gay men with KS to come out and it was going to get cancer then so, you know before that it was about sexual Liberation and it was about personal Liberation. It was partying with the Gay Liberation movement was in the hate on the heels of the women's Liberation movement. So it did that was really what it was all about. It was like, I don't know about trying to achieve authenticity if it came about other things, I think as the AIDS epidemic pointed out people want then we'll talk about it. People didn't want to acknowledge that the government didn't want to do the same thing phrase that they did to Legionnaires disease, you know, it was a really difficult situation patients were being true.

36:27 Beverly and hospitals by medical personnel and Allied Health Personnel will of those things are going on in the 80s. I did my internship as I said, it's in bed since they were for gay men in my Psychiatry internship and I'm the only one left alive one died in 1990 in the other two died in 1992 and they were all younger than I was so, you know, we went through a battle, you know, we survived at their treatments now people it's not a life sentence life has changed. I don't know how to answer the question. What do you think? What do you think you could really have hope and optimism for the future of

37:12 About 280 people. What do you think are some things that I'm that young LGBT people can expect in their lives today that that

37:22 That you can experience when you were you were young.

37:28 Well, I have seen my own practice cannot even starting of the 90s. I was starting to see young gay people could come out in high school, you know, and they were coming to New York to start University, you know, and they would be start experimenting with that heterosexuality because it's one of the patients that they were post gay and that is you know in so that people could be you know, they could have a different development, of course than me or than the than one that was above my generation and I think you know me now gay people young gay. People are asking each other when I go out there and you won't have kids that was not an option that that I had ever considered. And in fact, he knows only in the 90s when people I know started being a game and started having children. So, you know, you get married you can have kids you can you know, you can have a career in the military. I mean, there's so many things have changed not Everything Has Changed, of course, you know, what dealing with transgender military ban right now, which is Pat face, not on.

38:28 Trillium Prejudice, you asked me earlier why that died actually do have one Compass when I'm very happy about witches have not worked on the DSM-5 which is a psychiatrist diagnostic manual and helped revise, the gender identity disorder diagnosis of to what is now closed gender dysphoria. I'm now the section editor for the new DSM-5 text revision supposed to come out next year on the time and the editor of the chapter on gender dysphoria trying to update it. But even more importantly as I work on the World Health organization's working group that was revising the international classification of diseases call the ICD 11, which was just approved last week by the World Health Organization assembly and in that book, we moved transsexualism, which we now called gender incongruence out of the mental disorder section and into a chapter quote conditions related to sexual health and that way we would do something to stick my that affects transgender people and still allow them to have access to me.

39:28 Okay, and I think I think of that as a great accomplishment and again, it's not just my accomplishment. I work with other people on it, but I certainly had a voice, you know, and then helped shape the arguments to make the change from a very proud of that but the right.

39:52 Is there anything I am Mr. Anyting else? You'd like to share a good job. Thanks for sharing that much about your life in such a short amount of time with will thank you for paying so much attention to me.