Officer King and Dr. Kong Get the Madwoman Some "Help"

Originally posted December 2005


By Patricia Lefave
Labelled, D.D.(P)

The Big Intervention Meeting:

Officer King: Can anyone here shed any light on what has happened here? What does ''the subject'' think, feel, react to, know and understand? Who can tell us?

Monkey # 1: I haven't heard a thing officer.

Monkey # 2: I have not seen a thing sir.

Monkey # 3: I have not said a word about this to anyone. Honest.

Monkey Chorus: None of us have done a thing. She must be imagining things or perhaps she is crazy if she ''thinks'' we have.....

Dr. Kong: Well thanks to you all for coming and for your honesty. It is great to see you share our concern for this poor madwoman.

Officer King: Yes, you've all been great to co-operate with us in this matter and in our search for the reason. Of course, I wouldn't have expected anything else from such highly educated, sophisticated, intelligent people. If all you experts don't see a reason for this woman's perception and reactions then clearly, there can BE nothing there to see. Since we are all in agreement that nothing happened, the subject must be in need of some help. Dr. Kong and I will help her.

Dr. Kong: Thank you officer King. Pick her up at home and help her get to the hospital if you would. Though I must warn you; she may deny that she is physically sick. Many of ''them'' do you know. It is part of their disease process.

Officer King: Don't worry Dr. Kong, if need be I will handcuff the subject to a gurney until I get her to you so that she can be given something for her imagination. As we all know, it's for her own good.

And the Moral of the story?

When you are a human being, living on the Planet of the Apes, a cry for help can quickly be interpreted by the monkeys in power as a cry for "help." For when you don't speak the same language as those who a.c.t.t.ing as your "interpreters", you may be using exactly the same words, while never ''communicating'' at all.

As in all dysfunctional groups, what it all really means depends upon your perspective on the same reality doesn't it? Since psychiatry proclaims our experience to be a disease process and they can't talk to a disease, all further search for reason, for an alternate reality, has stopped. In this case, who would YOU rather be? The ''patient'' who can't be heard OR the psychiatrist who genuinely believes there IS nothing that needs hearing?

If you are now aware enough to know your choice must be NEITHER one, you are on your way out of the circle of our collective group insanity and beginning to face the reality of your own creation. Psychiatry is, as often as not, the source of it's own madness, and not infrequently, that of others as well.