Doctor Psychobabble

“When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro.”

- Hunter S. Thompson

I’ve always been a bit of an oddball. In high school, this translated into an incredibly awkward experience of not fitting in or “being cool.” Eventually, I learned to embrace the fact that I don’t always “fit in.” And now I wear my peculiarities on my sleeve. Literally.

I have a very strange job, when it comes down to it. And I think this may be why I chose psychiatry as a specialty. I have incredibly strange experiences all day long at work. And I love it.

I just finished reading, “Mount Misery” by Samuel Shem. As I’ve mentioned before, I HIGHLY recommend this book, especially for people in psychiatry or those who might be interested in psychiatry. At the end of the book, he lists the “Laws of Mount Misery,” which is the psychiatric hospital at which the story takes place. Here are the “laws:”

1. There are no laws in psychiatry.

2. Psychiatrists specialize in their defects.

3. At a psychiatric emergency, the first procedure is to check your own mental status.

4. The patient is not the only one with the disease, or without it.

5. In psychiatry, first comes treatment, then comes diagnosis.

6. The worst psychiatrists charge the most, and world experts are the worst.

7. Medical school is a liability in becoming a psychotherapist.

8. Your colleagues will hurt you more than your patients.

9. You can learn everything about a person by the way he or she plays a sport.

10. Medical patients don’t take their medication fifty percent of the time, and psychiatric patients don’t take their medication much at all.

11. Therapy is a part of life, and vice versa.

12. Healing in psychotherapy has nothing to do with psychology; connection, not self, heals.

13. The delivery of psychiatric care is to know as little as possible, and to understand as much as possible, about living through the sorrow with others.

I definitely could not have said it better myself!

Photos: Taken on my walk to work. I have a new obsession with pay phones in Brooklyn.

Part of My “Yo Brooklyn, Fuhgeddaboudit” Photo Series