A summary for those that haven't been keeping up with this series:
I found a bunch of 5.25" disks at a thrift store a number of years ago. I finally got around to acquiring a 5.25" disk drive and extracting the contents a while back. Since then I have been posting the contents here.
Based on the contents, at least some of these disks were apparently once owned by someone named Connie A. Buys who used to run the “Close Encounters” Special Interest Group (SIG) on Delphi in the mid 1980s.
A specific definition of this SIG was found in a previous document on one of the disks: “This SIG, known as “Close Encounters”, is a forum for the discussion of relationships that develop via computer services like the Source, CompuServe, and Delphi. Our primary emphasis is on the sexual aspects of those relationships.”
Everything was text based from whatever terminal program you used to dial in to Delphi’s servers. Many of these disks have forum messages, e-mails and chat session logs. All of this is pre-internet stuff and I don’t know if there are any archives in existence today of what was on Delphi in the 1980s. In any case, much of this stuff would have been private at the time and some of it is quite personal.
I've been splitting up the contents of this disk (descriptively labeled “File Disk”) since it contains a number of documents, some of which are pretty long. A 5.25" floppy disk can still hold an impressive amount of info when it is just text. (see the previous parts here: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19).
Not sure what the origin of this story was. An interesting statistic on psychiatrists and a positive change in the insurance industry I suppose.
This finally wraps up the contents of this disk. I'll be starting on a new disk in the next digital archaeology post.
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UNETHIC.DOC
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Starting May 1, psychiatrists who indulge in sex relations with their
patients no longer have the malpractice insurance policy of the
American Psychiatric Association to cover their sexual misconduct.
For years, the APA's basic liability insurance policy said nothing
about such hanky-panky or experimental patient-doctor sex therapy.
When patients sued or threatened to sue on grounds of seduction,
millions of dollars were paid in settlements.
In 1977, after studying 1000 therapists, Dr. Jean Holrody of UCLA
revealed that 5.5% of them had engaged in sexual relations with
clients. The American Psychiatric Association has always regarded sex
between psychiatrists and patients as unethical. "It cannot be
condoned under any circumstances," says John Blamphin, information
director of the APA, "and the association will no longer offer
insurance protection for any member-psychiatrist engaging in the
practice.