Dr. Robert Iadeluca

When people question the effectiveness of psychotherapy, Dr. Robert Iadeluca tells the story about a plumber.

A man calls a plumber to fix pipes that have become clogged with ice, Dr. Iadeluca says, his smile working its way to his bushy dark-gray eyebrows, which arch and bring out the wrinkles on his forehead.

The plumber taps his hammer along the pipe until he finds the problem spot.One thump of the hammer solves the problem.

After receiving a bill for $100, the customer asks the plumber why his services cost so much.

"The plumber says it cost $10 for unclogging the pipe," Dr. Iadeluca says.
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Dr. Iadeluca perhaps serves as his own best case study.

The good doctor has survived war, a spouse's untimely death, divorce, and plenty of career changes.Through it all he has managed to reinvent himself.

One might think Dr. Iadeluca, at 83, would be ready to start winding down.

But his track record indicates that he will keep going till he drops.

"I love my work.I feel I always wanted to do this.I started later . . . but that's okay.I feel great," he says, noting that many in his family have lived into their 90s, and some have topped 100.

Born in September 1920, Dr. Iadeluca grew up in rural Long Island.His Italian father, Casto, suffered "shellshock" in World War I, which left him partially paralyzed and on disability his entire life.

His mother Lottie, a Swedish woman, "was a strong influence."

She passed on her positive attitude to her only child.She was the one who encouraged him to sing and to play the violin and the trumpet.She got him interested in the Boy Scouts.

He recalls a plaque she hung on the wall that read:

"Keep your face toward the sunshine and the shadows will fall behind."

But she died when he was only nine.

With just his father around, the younger Iadeluca had to "grow up fast."

After high school, he and his father moved to New York City to live with his grandparents.

The younger Iadeluca then enlisted in the army.

He served four years, 1942 to '46.During his service he got lucky - or enjoyed good timing, depending on how you look at it - more than once.

His 29th Infantry Division missed the D-Day battle, for instance, arriving on the beaches of Normandy after the carnage.

Mr. Iadeluca did see action.He downplays it, though, saying that as a first sergeant all he did was stand out of the line of fire next to the communication tent.He did have to remain wary of artillery fire, though.

"I like to say the closest I came to death was when I wasn't there" on the front lines, he says.Turned out that the communication center got leveled on a weekend when he was on leave in France.

Following the war, Mr. Iadeluca was assigned the task of helping create educational opportunities for U.S. soldiers who remained in Europe.

He signed himself up for a stint at the prestigious University of Paris-Sorbonne.Though he had only two years of French in high school, he passed the required test in that language.The professors taught in French.

While he studied, he performed duties as a military policeman - in name only, he admits.He and a buddy had no chance to handle the mobs of U.S. servicemen "getting drunk."The two simply took off their "MP" arm bands and mingled while on duty.

Just after the war, Mr. Iadeluca had met a young French woman, "the most beautiful girl in the world," he says.The two spent time together while he studied at Sorbonne, but he left her behind when he returned home.

He dated other women, but it became clear that the French girl was the one for him.He proposed to her in a letter.Ever cautious, he gave her nine reasons why she should not marry him.One being that he had no job.

Fernande, or "Bijou" as her friends called her, sent a telegram with a single word: "Oui."

They married on April 9, 1947, exactly a year after his discharge from the Army.

Mr. Iadeluca earned his bachelor's degree in psychology two and a half years later.He wanted to go to graduate school, "but a little thing called life moved in."

The couple had two young sons, so he got a job with a New York ad agency where he'd worked before the war.

During the next 20 or so years, he left that job and followed it with stints at the Boy Scouts and the New York State Department of Education.During that time, his wife died of cancer, leaving him a widower in his 50s.

He later remarried and helped raise two stepdaughters.The couple eventually divorced, but he had an impact on the girls.
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Mr. Iadeluca got his chance at a new career in 1972, after a budget crunch at the New York State Department of Education cost him his job.

This was "the chance I'd been waiting for," he says.At 52, he entered the State University of New York's graduate school.

As a grandfather in grad school, he says, "I was sort of on the cutting edge.I was the only one there."

He failed to get into State University's doctorate program in psychology, and later learned that officials considered him too old.

"I said, ‘By God, I'll fix their boat,' " he recalls.

Mr. Iadeluca applied to "every" university that offered the doctorate program in which he wanted to study.
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Before starting his new job as a research psychologist with the Department of the Army, Dr. Iadeluca lived in poverty, surviving one month eating nothing but tomatoes. (He remains a vegetarian.)

"There I was at 60 years old, entering the federal government when everybody around me was retiring," he says.

With the federal government job, he researched military families.During his many interviews with them, he discovered many had problems with drug and alcohol addiction.

He retired nine years later, in 1989, and figured he'd relax and enjoy his golden years.But his interest in addiction spurred him into yet another career.

He wanted to become a psychologist and treat people with addictions.He attended seminars, went on ride-alongs with cops, sat in bars watching people get drunk, and attended Alcoholics Anonymous meetings.He also interned in the addiction unit at Blue Ridge Hospital in Charlottesville.

Eventually, at age 72, he got his Virginia clinical psychology license and opened a practice in Warrenton.

Addiction - the brain in general, really - fascinates Dr. Iadeluca.Why does one person succumb to alcohol or cocaine and not another? he asks with eyebrows arched.

"There is no doubt that addiction is a disease," he says."There are some people who don't want to believe this, but there is too much research."

Dr. Iadeluca also specializes in treating clinical depression, chronic pain, bipolar and posttraumatic stress disorders, among other problems.

He believes too many doctors and patients rely on medication to treat mental illnesses.

"The general populace wants a quick fix.Pop something in your mouth and everything's fine," he says.

Though he can't prescribe medication, Dr. Iadeluca has plenty of knowledge of "psychopharmaceuticals," retired psychologist Dr. Robert Meyer says."He just wants to be informed."

Medication has its place, Dr. Iadeluca says.