Today’s Funny Story.

In conversation with a therapist friend of mine apropos his reference for me volunteering to fly over a cuckoos nest one day a week he related the following tale. Years ago in his long and varied experience he lived in a psychiatric commune, patients and therapists cheek by jowl together in a big house. Much nearer the present day he was giving a lecture on something or other and as the mature students filed in one woman on seeing him screamed a little and clasped her hands to her face big eyed in amazement. I began to imagine someone had prematurely told her he’d died. Friend continued with the lecture also probably wondering the reason behind the response, especially as he had no recollection of ever meeting her before. At the end she came up to him and asked if he’d been in a psychiatric commune years before. He said he had. She said she was in a group that was shown round that commune by a delightful young doctor who in a whispered authoritative aside described my friend as “he’s a perfect example of a schizophrenic.” Thus she was temporarily alarmed on entering the room and seeing this clinically diagnosed schizo giving the lecture. He explained the then obvious truth that she had actually been shown round by a patient. It’s a fine line, and as my dad used to say, “They’s all mad ‘sept me and thee, and I’m not so sure about thee.”