A hilarious and perceptive examination of the mysteries of childhood and the perils of parenthood
From August 1956 through April 1961 I controlled the traffic and streetlights in New York City and northern New Jersey. It was a daunting task for a five-year-old, but by the summer of ‘56 I realized I had a responsibility I could not ignore. My identity and my mission were top secret. With the exception of terse, encrypted communications to the National Security Council and the CIA, I couldn’t breathe a word.
In this honest and witty debut, Daniel J. Tomasulo chronicles and confesses his childhood delusions, his particularly challenging experiences as a parent, and his life as a psychologist. His memories of being a kid—controlling streetlights, avoiding any foods with seeds lest he get pregnant, enduring his mother’s cold love—are vivid, and his life as a parent is riddled with dilemmas. To start, he finds himself locked in a rubber-walled hospital room while his wife is in labor, and later he faces the necessity of giving mouth-to-mouth to his daughter’s suffocating Raggedy Ann doll. As a professional who specializes in the highly personal, he traces the unusual and illuminating connections between his own life and evocative scenes from the lives of his patients.
With refreshing candor and laugh-out-loud humor, Tomasulo explores the elusive magic of childhood, the complications of parent-child relationships, and the lasting significance of the everyday.
I was born on an island off the coast of New Jersey on July 20th, 1951. This means I'm a Jersey boy, which means I've got an attitude. Hey, you got a problem with that?
From Manhattan my parents moved to Brooklyn for a year then to Union City, New Jersey, then to Waldwick until I went off to wrestle at Springfield College in Massachusetts. They broke my bones and tore almost all my ligaments, so decided to go into psychology rather than physical education. I eventually completed my masters in child development at FDU in Teaneck, then enrolled at Yeshiva University in NYC for my PhD in developmental psychology. I completed it just before my 30th birthday.
Along the way I got married and divorced, worked at various human service jobs, and wrote a comedy column for The Aquarian, a rock and roll magazine where I met several performers as a result of hanging out with the music reviewers. I also spent a couple of years as a stand-up comic appearing on the Improv's 20th anniversary special as one of the up-and-comers. During that time I wrote jokes and sold them to magazines and a few major comics of the time. One night I got to have a drink with the comedian, Andy Kaufman, (of Taxi fame) which was a memorable evening. I hope to write about this somewhere down the road. "Tank you berry much."
In the late 70s I ran an experimental group home for YAI, National Institute for People with Disabilities, taking people out of Willowbrook State Hospital, the facility made infamous by Geraldo Rivera's investigative reporting. I left there in 1980 to take a teaching position at Brookdale College where I stayed until September, 2001. I was then appointed to a full-time faculty position at New Jersey City University where I am currently employed.
During that same period of time I became fascinated with psychodrama and began weekly training. After a lengthy apprenticeship (8 1/2 years) I received certification as a psychodramatist, and then followed up with an additional five years of psychodrama supervision. I now train and certify other therapists in these methods, and have a training group of my own. Some of my experiences as a trainee appear in the story Manhattan Transference.
I have published extensively on providing treatment for people with intellectual disabilities, and was co-author of the American Psychological Association's first book on psychotherapy for this population, as well as co-author of the Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder chapter for the DM-ID the Diagnostic Manual-Intellectual Disabilities published by the National Association for Dually Diagnosed in association with the American Psychiatric Association. This chapter changed the criteria by which people with intellectual disabilities will be diagnosed with PTSD, and is the forerunner of The DSM V, the publication used by mental health clinicians for diagnosing patients.
Our daughter, Devon, has two psychologists as parents. Can you imagine? She was born in 1985 and there are several stories in the book about her birth, and my effort at fatherhood. She recently completed Pacific University's MFA program in poetry.She is now a doctoral candidate.
In the late eighties I developed IBT -Interactive-Behavioral Therapy which has become the most widely used form of group therapy for people with intellectual and psychiatric disabilities, and received both the Innovator's and Scholar's Award from the American Society of Group Psychotherapy and Psychodrama. In 2005 I was also honored as The State of New Jersey Healthcare Provider of the year by the ARC. Much of my professional life as a psychologist is spent training clinicians around the United States and other countries wishing to use IBT. I have a private practice in Red Bank, New Jersey. In my clinical practice I work with individuals, couples, and groups. You can learn more about my work as a psychologist at TheHealingCrowd.com
My writing life -the more serious side of it--began in 1998 when I was awarded a fellowship to Princeton University and took a sabbatical from Brookdale. During this time I was working with the well known social psychologist, John Darley, who studied the people who watched the Kitty Genovese murder in 1964 and created the concept known as the bystander effect (also know as bystander apathy) referring to the account that 38 people witnessed as she was murdered and did nothing about it. While at Princeton I was able to take courses in the writing department, which houses such notables as Paul Muldoon, Joyce Carol Oates, Toni Morrison, and, at the time, Christopher Durang and Jack Klaff. These courses allowed me to create the essays that became the foundation of what would become the memoir. During the sabbatical I put together a portfolio and had a couple of professors from Princeton write letters of recommendation for me to The New School. In 2000 I returned to graduate school and became a MFA candidate in Creative Non-Fiction writing.
The MFA program at the New School was outstanding for my development as a writer. Robert Polito, Lucy Grealy, and Dani Shapiro were all professors that had a tremendous impact on my development. Dani Shapiro became my thesis advisor and I worked with her after receiving my MFA to get my manuscript in good enough shape to entice an agent. Also following graduation I won the New School's Chapbook contest for Kettle of Fish, and in 2004 Janet Reid of Fine Print Literary Management liked what she read, and in 2006 I contracted with Graywolf to publish the memoir in 2008.
Since the book had been published I have been invited to speak at many bookstores and book clubs -which has been a very enjoyable addition to my professional career. I was also given the opportunity to write for PsychCentral.com, one of time Magazines top 50 websites. http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/author/danielt/
I also write for Psychology Today as their expert blogger in group therapy. http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/the-healing-crowd
I am currently working on the screenplay and book with the working title, The Participants, which describes my efforts with some extraordinary people with intellectual and psychiatric disabilities.
In 2011 I was very fortunate to be selected to attend the University of Pennsylvania's Master of Applied Positive Psychology (MAPP) program. I have recently completed the requirement for this degree and have joined the staff in the MAPP program as Martin Seligman's learning assistant. A book proposal: The Power of Positive Being on the use of positive psychology in everyday life is underway.
My favorite quote, you ask?
"There are two words to describe Zen: Not Always So." -Suzuki.
I have never seen so much love, hate, anger, laughter, and resolution in a book. There were moments that I laughed hysterically out loud. Other times I was mesmerized at the profoundness of some situations. I even took a half a day of work off to finish the rest of the book. It was like watching someone bake a cake. It seems so simple until its time to do it. I recommend this book to anyone and everyone! Thank you so much to the author for the experience of your experiences!
As a book coach, I seldom get to read just for pleasure, without having to edit or mark up a manuscript. What a delight to take this break and read Daniel Tomasulo's Confessions of a Former Child. It meets all my criteria for a fabulous read: * It made me laugh out loud many times. * I just had to share excerpts with my husband--it was too good to keep to myself. * Passages moved me and expanded my world. * I found myself relating and the book offered me a new perspective on my own parents and myself as a parent--it made me think and grow.
Tomasulo is a master storyteller and his childhood offers many great stories. It's the kind of book that makes you ask, "Why isn't my life as funny as this, or is he just better at seeing the humor in everything?"
I love the way he weaves vignettes together and brings things back around. And his stories about directing the traffic lights from his childhood apartment in NYC are among my favorite.
As a child, Daniel J. Tomasulo had a very active imagination. He was convinced his father was a spy, not just an ordinary spy either, but a double agent. He was so proud of his father and would beg to join him on some of his "missions." Daniel also believed that he controlled all of the street lights and traffic lights in Union City, New Jersey and New York City, so he was pretty upset when his family moved to the country. His father solved all of his problems by secretly wiring a local streetlight to all of those in Union City and New York City. When Daniel's mother told him that she became pregnant when a seed grew inside her, he swore off all foods that could possibly contain a seed and subsisted on cream cheese and butter sandwiches, as long as the bread wasn't rye, of course. Daniel grew up, got married and became a psychologist and psychodrama trainer. He tells the story of the first person he did a psychological test on for the state. It was the first time he'd tested someone with an intellectual disability and his patient was quite a character. He shares the story of accidentally decapitating his daughter's Ken doll. He tells of training for and running in the New York City Marathon.
These and other stories are included in Daniel J. Tomasulo's Confressions of a Former Child: A Therapist's Memoir. Tomasulo's writing engaged me right from the beginning. His memories are written in a non-linear fashion, but he writes in such a way that it works. When he writes about his childhood, it's obvious he remembers how it feels to be a child. Some parts of this book are very funny and had me laughing out loud. I even read parts to Carl and he was laughing at it, too. Carl said he could see why I was enjoying the book. I have to say that I really didn't enjoy the part when he wrote of the psychodrama he performed to resolve some issues with his late mother. While this may have been something important for him to go through, I felt like it was too personal for me to read about. Overall, I felt like this was a good, but not great book.
