Wolf Man.

There aren't many people who have experienced Lycanthropy, just as there aren't that many who even know what the word means. But having grown up as I did, with a borderline mother given to fits of uncontrollable madness, I am well aware of the ailment, though you can't ever, really, get accustomed to it. 

Lycanthropy is an ancient disease. It's named, in fact, after a king in ancient Greece, four millennia ago, who was punished by Zeus by being turned into a wolf.

Instances of Lycanthropy appear in western thought as early as the bible. In Daniel 4, Nebuchadnezzar (who is more well-known today as a large bottle of wine) was "driven from men, and did eat grass as an oxen." He was in real need of a makeover. His "hair grew like eagles' feathers" and his nails as "birds' claws." 

William Blake painted Nebuchadnezzar like this, hardly a picture you'd put on your Hinge profile, unless, of course, you're into wolf-kink, as so many are.

Of course, if you think for a minute about modern horror movies, werewolves are practically a leitmotif, with literally thousands of films made about, in essence, Lycanthropy. Here are a mere smattering.

These movies didn't emerge fully-formed from the head of Zeus. For thousands of years, around the world cautionary tales of primarily men being turned into wolves abounded.

Some years ago, my therapist of four decades, O, suggested I read "The Parnas," by Silvano Arieti. Arieti, a psychiatrist, a survivor of both the Holocaust and an attack by wolf-Nazis was one of the Twentieth Century's great minds. He was one of the world's foremost authorities on schizophrenia and has written one of the great books on creativity, "Creativity: The Magic Synthesis."

Here's how Arieti describes his up-close encounter with a small group of Nazis, seeing them transform.

Freud in his study of Little Hans--a boy who turned into a wolf wrote, "Lupus homini lupus." Only a wolf acts like a wolf to man.

I'm 98.7-percent Freud was wrong here. I've seen Lycanthropy. I'm a survivor, in fact.

This isn't something I joke about.

There are many who know about Lycanthropy who claim that whole cultures can turn lupine. I am one of them.

Sixty million Germans shuffled their iPods one morning. They switched from Beethoven and Mozart to the Horst Wessel lied and Deutschland Über Alles.

Today, fifty percent of amerika is snarling and drooling spittle and blood and chanting in Leni Riefenstahl guttural exhortations USA USA!

Soon goons will be clamping down on those of us not goose-stepping. We will be arrested. Assaulted. Categorized as üntermenschen. The wolves are here. 

They attack in packs.
And the packs normalize the attacks.

My country tis of thee,
Sweet land Lycanthropy,
Of thee I mourn.