Psychiatrists won’t admit it. Social workers won’t admit it. Perhaps their reluctance is based in the fear that anyone could do what they do, without years of schooling and intensive training in clinical methodology. Case in point: my friend, Arthur.
Arthur is a 46-year-old chemical engineer; happily married with two teenage daughters. He began to feel depressed last year for no apparent reason. Like most people, he dismissed it as transient and went on with his life without mentioning it to anyone.
“I assumed it was some sort of mid-life thing,” he told me, “but it didn’t go away. It got worse. I would wake up in the morning, call in sick to work and go back to sleep. Nothing interested me. It got to the point where I wouldn’t go out of the house. I didn’t talk with my wife or kids – I stayed in my room and slept.” Finally, his wife convinced him to see a psychiatrist.
“Here’s what really kills me,” he said. “The guy didn’t do anything. He charged me $90 for nothing.”
“What actually happened?” I asked.
“Well, first I had to fill out the paperwork, which was ridiculous because it required me to write my life story in two paragraphs. Then I had to wait an hour … something about an emergency he had to attend to at the hospital. Finally Miss Pinkerton tells me I can go in. I don’t know if I should knock first, but I decide to walk in. He’s sitting behind his desk and I tell you, he looks exactly like a shrink should look – balding, glasses, a tweed sports jacket with patches on the elbows … the works.”
Arthur recounted the dialogue.
“So, what is it that brings you here?”
“My wife wanted me to come. I haven’t been feeling well – depressed, I think.”
“Depressed?”
“Yeah, you know; everything seems gray, I don’t want to do anything. Nothing interests me.”
“Nothing at all?”
“Right. Nothing at all. Is that what you would call depression?”
“What do you think?”
At that point according to Arthur, he realized that every question he asked was followed with another question. He concluded that if this was a question contest, he would make sure he won. “I wasn’t going to let this guy take my money without telling me something.”
“What do I think? I’m paying you to find out what you think.”
“Of course. Do you think that what I think is more important than what you think?
“Well … take a guess. What do you think?”
“Ah, let me ask you – are you angry right now?”
“Wouldn’t you be? You’re like a parrot. I could do this at home with a mirror.”
Arthur said he knew then that he had lost the contest – his question was rhetorical and made it clear that he was in fact angry, upon which the shrink abandoned the interrogative and leaned forward at his desk as if he was about to unveil a psychiatric bomb.
“Well, I can tell you this – you are most certainly not depressed right now. Your anger rules that out, but there may be something else going on … perhaps we can find out what it is.”
“Dr. Weekler, suppose that I was only pretending to be angry. What would that mean?”
“Then I would say that you had a very serious problem.”
“Yes, go on.”
“Tell me, how do you feel right now?”
“Like a very unpleasant, smelly substance. And no, I don’t know what that feels like either, so don‘t ask me that question.”
“Are you sleeping?”
“Now? Of course not. I’m wide awake.”
We both enjoyed a good belly laugh at that one. “He stuffed his papers in a folder and stormed out of the office, leaving m e sitting there. Talk about anger – this guy had issues. He looked like a Nazi SS who had just had a bad meeting with Hitler.”
“But I figured it out. First of all, I haven’t felt depressed since then. It was all anger … stuff that related to an argument Janice and I had about money and how inadequate I felt. Here’s the thing, though. Psychiatry is like fire rescue. Weekler did his job as he had been trained. All mentally disturbed people live in burning buildings and it’s the fireman’s job to get them onto a ladder that sways in the wind 30 floors above cold concrete. What’s the first thing they say? ‘Don’t look down.’ In shrink language, it’s a question followed by more questions; somehow it all turns into an instructional course on making instrument landings … you never get to see the runway but you land anyway and through some process I don‘t understand, you find the answer yourself. If Weekler led me to the answer right away, I wouldn’t have believed it.”
“You mean he tricked you?” I asked.
“Yes. The whole thing was an elaborate act. Weekler? He’s nothing more than a stage show magician. A good one at that. He tricked me onto that ladder and left me there to climb down.”
“Unbelievable.”
“Yeah, and the tricks are amazing. The questions in response to questions asked; the body language; and the best was his closing act – storming out as if he really had been offended by my last response. All of it distraction.”
“Distraction from what?”
“From falling. Metaphorically, the ground below is the pit – the place depressed people go if they see it. Getting on that ladder and climbing down alone felt good. I felt renewed, like I had conquered something and been given a second chance at life.”
A second chance. I guess we all want that. Amazingly, the psychiatric profession, (which I have held little respect for) offers that second chance in a most remarkable way.