Exploring the dark secrets of the mind

LOS ANGELES — Today, Rizal Day, is a good day to write about another Filipino doctor who speaks Spanish and writes literary pieces. This other Filipino doctor also experienced a few years in political exile during the Marcos martial law years. And like Dr. Jose P. Rizal, Dr. Ricardo S. Soler also has a reputation with the ladies and also studied at the University of Sto. Tomas.

Dr. Soler recently launched a book which is a compilation of a number of his short stories, some of which were earlier published in the Free Press. To fully appreciate his stories, one must know that Dr. Soler is a psychiatrist. That explains the twists and turns of his stories that explore the inner workings of the mind. Dr. Soler is also an astute observer of the country’s social condition through the ages. His social commentary on the failure of such programs as agrarian reform and the travails of our OFWs are as fresh as the day’s newspapers.

I first heard of Dr. Soler when he published one of the country’s first glossies in the early years of martial law. He told me that he did it primary to give his good friend, our late publisher Max Soliven a vehicle to continue his journalism at a time when no one would touch Max with a ten foot pole. The magazine concentrated on tourism and beautiful Filipina girls and it shouldn’t have gotten him into trouble with the Marcos government but it did.

I first met Dr. Soler at the Tuesday Club a few years before Max died. He told me that he was a student of my late father at the UST College of Medicine. And like most of my dad’s students, he had some fascinating stories of how my father was one of his most memorable professors who knew how to make them learn.  

Dr. Soler got his medical degree from UST but never really practiced medicine until he was on exile in the United States, and only as an associate of a group practice. He found the world of business more fascinating. He is the person to go to if you are going to have a small party and need someone to cook paella like it should be cooked. He runs the kitchens of a number of Spanish restaurants and even bought the franchise of Goodah.

In other words, Dr. Soler is as eclectically interesting as the stories in his collection of short stories entitled For Starters. We kid him at the Tuesday Club for having written the Pinoy version of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, given some of the sexually explicit nature of his stories. Or maybe, he was just putting on paper some of his most innermost fantasies or just trying to support an image that has evolved around his persona as a lover as lovers are meant to be. Who knows what lurks in Dr. Ricky’s mind!

Dr. Ricky is a risk taker as any businessman or lover should be. In one of his stories in the compilation where the principal character is, perhaps not by accident, a psychiatrist, this passage may as well sum up the author’s philosophy in life.

“When I was young and unmarried, a friend and I went to a party where we were not even invited to. As soon as we got there, he asked a girl for a dance. They had hardly started dancing when I saw her slap him on the face quite hard and push him away.”

“What happened?” he asked with much curiosity.

“I asked him the same question. He told me that she slapped him after he asked her if she would go to bed with him that night.”

“He asked her that right away?” he asked with even more curiosity.

“That’s what he did, without even know her except by her first name. He told me that he did it all the time. When I asked if he got slapped often he answered yes and said that getting slapped was not what was important. ‘Think of the times I don’t get slapped,’ he said.”

My guess is, Dr. Ricky must have gotten a lot of slaps on his face in his time and that’s why he is as happy as any 72 year old could be. Those of us who have not experienced even a slap is sadder for it. If only we…

Then there is the story in Dr. Ricky’s collection about a doctor who studied also at UST and was a ladies man. The similarities of the character with the author is only coincidental because the big difference is, Dr. Ricky is far from being a tragic figure. It is a story that humanizes doctors as human beings with similar problems of self doubt that we common folks have. The story is about depression, a subject that is of great interest to Dr. Ricky.

One of Dr. Ricky’s advocacies involves increasing public awareness and understanding of what clinical depression is all about and how to prevent it from consuming its victims. Dr. Ricky is active in helping the Goulbourn Foundation in helping OFWs in Hong Kong cope with depression so as to reduce if not stop the increasing number of suicide cases arising from it.

I am not a literary critic so I am not in a position to judge the literary values of Dr. Soler’s collection of short stories. I leave all that to the literary notables who have written critical acclaims of this collection. All I can say is that I had one enjoyable experience reading it during the holidays.

The twists and turns in all of Dr. Ricky’s stories seem to all have their foundation on Dr. Ricky’s keen understanding of the human mind. He may have gathered these insights during the years he actually practiced psychiatry and listened to all those true life stories from his patients. Dr. Ricky just confirmed that the human mind is always fascinating and never predictable.

For its sheer entertainment value, Dr. Ricky Soler’s book is a good buy. For the insights he provides on how the human mind works its mysterious ways, the book is a useful source you will want to have access to. As for the sensuous episodes in the stories, of which there are quite a few, these were written with the passion and delicacy of someone who knows what he speaks of.

Bravo! Dr. Ricky Soler. Great stories and great fun reading all of them. Is a movie or teleserye next in the agenda?

Christmas carols

 Atty. Sonny Pulgar sent these Christmas Carols for the psychologically challenged.

1. Schizophrenia — Do You Hear What I Hear?

2. Multiple Personality Disorder — We Three Queens Disoriented Are

3. Amnesia — I Don’t Know if I’ll be Home for Christmas

4. Narcissistic — Hark the Herald Angels Sing About Me

5. Manic — Deck the Halls and Walls and House and Lawn and Streets and Stores and Office and Town and Cars and Buses and Trucks and Trees and Fire Hydrants and ...

6. Paranoid — Santa Claus is Coming to Get Me

7. Borderline Personality Disorder — Thoughts of Roasting on an Open Fire

8 . Full Personality Disorder— You Better Watch Out, I’m Gonna Cry, I’m Gonna Pout, Maybe I’ll tell You Why

9. Obsessive Compulsive Disorder —Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells, Jingle Bells ..

10. Senile Dementia — Walking in a Winter Wonderland Miles From My House in My Slippers and Robe

11. Oppositional Defiant Disorder — I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus So I Burned Down the House

12. Social Anxiety Disorder — Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas While I Sit Here and Hyperventilate.

Boo Chanco’s e-mail address is [email protected]