Karen:  Whenever I read of psychiatrists “diagnosing” people without so much as speaking to or being in the same room with them, I am reminded of the statist psychiatrists who, during the 1964 presidential campaign, “analyzed” Barry Goldwater on the basis of newspaper stories.  I am also reminded of the insights of a psychiatrist friend of mine who said that psychiatry is not an applied science but, at best, an art form.  All of which further reminds me of my all-time favorite motion picture — one that deals with the relationship between state-psychiatry and the individual:  an Argentine film, Man Facing Southeast.

Thus are we left with the real insanity in our “normal” world:  those who conspire, lie, deceive, and create systems for the mass killings of men, women, and children are defined as “sane,” while those who object — and endeavor to inform others of this well-organized insanity — are the ones with the psychological problems.

All of which brings to mind the wonderful line in the Orson Welles classic, Compulsion. When taking on the defense of two young men who murdered a small boy in Chicago [a fictionalized account of the Loeb and Leopold case], the Welles character was told by the prosecuting attorney that two psychiatrists had observed the defendants and pronounced them “sane.”  Welles responded that it would be far more interesting to hear the psychiatrists’ analyses after observing one another!

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