‘Why Do You Hate Psychiatry?’

“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.

Of course, I had never consciously resolved to have “contempt for pretty much everything” — anyway, “everything” is obviously hyperbolic — and it’s not obvious that I emerged from the womb this way, which is to say that it’s not some inborn trait, but I’ll be damned it doesn’t strike a chord.

“Among other things, you’ll find that you’re not the first person who was ever confused and frightened and even sickened by human behavior. You’re by no means alone on that score, you’ll be excited and stimulated to know. Many, many men have been just as troubled morally and spiritually as you are right now. Happily, some of them kept records of their troubles. You’ll learn from them—if you want to. Just as someday, if you have something to offer, someone will learn something from you. It’s a beautiful reciprocal arrangement. And it isn’t education. It’s history. It’s poetry.”
-J.D. Salinger, The Catcher in the Rye

Benjamin Bartee, author of Broken English Teacher: Notes From Exile (now available in paperback), is an independent Bangkok-based American journalist with opposable thumbs.

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