Adam
Senior Member
- Messages
- 495
- Location
- Sheffield UK
I'm sure Philip K Dick would not have minded me quoting from one of his many novels. The folowing piece comes from The Ganymede Takeover (1967) with Ray Nelson.
The thing that annoyed him (Dr. Balkani) most seemed to be Ringdahl’s insistence that he ‘crack them’. I want to cure them, not crack them, he thought to himself, as he entered his office.
He thought, then, about Joan Hiashi. An interesting case but not in accord with any of his previous findings; her reaction to oblivion therapy was unique. He would have to write an entire new chapter in his thesis in the New Psychoanalysis, all because of her. Perhaps, he reflected, I’ll have to revise my entire theory. What a painful thought…a life’s work down the drain, just because of one exception. And yet, as he well knew, a single inordinate exception such as this did not prove the rule; it broke the rule.
…Perhaps, he mused, I’ll honour her by naming a mental illness after her. ‘The Hiashi Complex’. No, that was perhaps too ambitious. ‘The Hiashi Syndrome’. That would be better.
Closing the door of his office after him he seated himself at the foot of his analyst’s couch and glared sightlessly at the rather tarnished bust of Sigmund Freud looming on top of the bookcase. Quite a frowning father figure, aren’t you? he thought.
Substitute XMRV for Joan Hiashi and CBT for oblivion therapy, and WPI's study for a single inordinate exception and it becomes eerily contemporary.
You don't think Wesselly et al will get to name it XMRV Syndrome do you?
Anyway, there you are, you spared a thought.
I don't expect anyone to dwell on the misery XMRV should/will one day heap on our nemesis(s), not with all the misery it has already heaped upon us.
The thing that annoyed him (Dr. Balkani) most seemed to be Ringdahl’s insistence that he ‘crack them’. I want to cure them, not crack them, he thought to himself, as he entered his office.
He thought, then, about Joan Hiashi. An interesting case but not in accord with any of his previous findings; her reaction to oblivion therapy was unique. He would have to write an entire new chapter in his thesis in the New Psychoanalysis, all because of her. Perhaps, he reflected, I’ll have to revise my entire theory. What a painful thought…a life’s work down the drain, just because of one exception. And yet, as he well knew, a single inordinate exception such as this did not prove the rule; it broke the rule.
…Perhaps, he mused, I’ll honour her by naming a mental illness after her. ‘The Hiashi Complex’. No, that was perhaps too ambitious. ‘The Hiashi Syndrome’. That would be better.
Closing the door of his office after him he seated himself at the foot of his analyst’s couch and glared sightlessly at the rather tarnished bust of Sigmund Freud looming on top of the bookcase. Quite a frowning father figure, aren’t you? he thought.
Substitute XMRV for Joan Hiashi and CBT for oblivion therapy, and WPI's study for a single inordinate exception and it becomes eerily contemporary.
You don't think Wesselly et al will get to name it XMRV Syndrome do you?
Anyway, there you are, you spared a thought.
I don't expect anyone to dwell on the misery XMRV should/will one day heap on our nemesis(s), not with all the misery it has already heaped upon us.