When I met with M for the first time, she was still a woman.
She was a resident in psychiatry then. She came to Cold Spring Harbor to see a researcher who has been studying antidepressants. While the popular belief on how the SSRIs work is that they inhibit the re-uptake process of selective serotonin (thus SSRI, Selective Serotonin Re-uptake Inhibitor), this researcher believes that the real underlying reason is that SSRIs help the brain grow more brain cells.
We had lunch together, with a group of people. She was obviously excited about the prospect that by prescribing medication she could help people out of their misery. She however went a bit too far and gave me the impression that she believed that all psychological problems were caused by neurotransmitters like serotonin and should be solved by correcting the abnormalty of their activity. I could not help but tried to challenge her a bit. I jokingly asked, "well, my friend's dog died yesterday and she felt very sad, I was wondering how her dog's death caused the drop of her serotonin level." She looked at me and laughed.
Nearly 10 years had passed and I met with her again. She now became a he and he had become a psychologist instead of the expected psychiatrist. We had lunch together again, by ourselves this time. She told me her story.
to be continued.