“If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn’t rub out even half the ‘fuck you’ signs in the world. It’s impossible.”
-J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye
Try as I might to avoid shrinks these days, I received out of the ether an email — a most curious and unexpected one — from a psychiatrist in the employ of a famed medical organization you’ve definitely heard of, whom I won’t name as a courtesy, as he’d be liable to face sanctions if his bosses found out he were on friendly, or quasi-friendly, speaking terms with such a reviled heretic to The Science™ as me.
“Why do you hate psychiatry?” read the subject line, a reference to my many writings littering the internet deriding the profession and its apologists, like this gentleman.
The body of the email contained this excerpt (emphasis my own):
“What is the source of your contempt for psychiatry? I have three guesses: 1) it is simply part of your all-round contempt for pretty much everything*; 2) you took a class in college from one of those brain-dead historians or sociologists who love Thomas Szasz and think they know what they are talking about; 3) (most likely) there is a personal experience, either yourself or someone close to you, that went bad and you think the psychiatrist was all to blame.”
*Legitimate reasons to hold institutional psychiatry in contempt notwithstanding, this line, in particular, I admit, delivered in such a matter-of-fact manner, gave me pause: “It is simply part of your all-round contempt for pretty much everything.”
“How much does he charge?” my wife asked after I relayed this story to her.
His candid analysis from afar had impressed her.
It impressed me, too, in a way, having never heard my worldview put quite like that.