Did His Doctor Love Him to Death?

To his Mexican immigrant family, Paul Lozano was a star. A brilliant and shy student from El Paso, he had gained entry to one of the nation's most elite institutions: Harvard Medical School. His future seemed assured. But during his third year of studies, Lozano became homesick and depressed. He got a list of Harvard-recommended therapists and called the first name on the alphabetical roster: psychiatrist Margaret Bean-Bayog. A clinical assistant professor at the medical school, she had a reputation as a gifted lecturer and dedicated researcher into substance abuse.

But what followed for Lozano, his grieving family claims, was a death spiral into infantilism and madness. On April 2, 1991, just a few months before he was to receive his M.D., Lozano, 28, injected himself with a lethal dose of cocaine. Last week Dr. Bean-Bayog, 48, found herself before the Massachusetts medical licensing board refuting charges by Lozano's family that she had driven him to suicide by seducing him into a lurid affair, brainwashing him into thinking that she was his loving "Mom" and he her baby boy, and then dumping him when he could no longer pay for treatment.

Lozano's family, which is suing the psychiatrist for malpractice and "wrongful death," offers some extraordinary evidence. Among the items they retrieved from his Boston apartment were children's books such as Goodnight, Moon, inscribed in Bean-Bayog's hand to "the baby"; tapes in which the therapist instructs Lozano to repeat 10 times, "I'm your Mom, and I love you, and you love me very, very much"; flash cards made by the psychiatrist, one of which refers to missing "the phenomenal sex"; photographs taken by Lozano that show Bean-Bayog snuggling a stuffed bear; and a series of letters and stories she wrote to him playing out fantasies about maternal love and devotion. More perplexing still are dozens of pages in her handwriting that describe her sadomasochistic sexual fantasies. Lozano's sister claims her brother said he and the psychiatrist had an affair.

Despite such evidence, the case against Bean-Bayog is by no means airtight. In testimony before the state board, the psychiatrist denied ever having sex with Lozano and maintained that he was far more disturbed than his family is letting on. She described him as "chronically suicidal," the victim of "horrendous childhood abuse," a drug user, and a liar subject to delusions of sexual abuse involving both her and another female psychiatrist. Though a social worker who had worked with Lozano challenges this depiction, other therapists familiar with the case support Bean-Bayog's account.