SANITY

When in 1968 I graduated, after four years of intensive studies in the McGill University Diploma Course in Psychiatry, in Montreal, I noticed an odd thing: I knew nothing about myself “Joaquin”-my self, that is-nor about the human mind and therefore nothing about that of others. And science? Well, that was for the birds.

I just knew how to prescribe and diagnose (based on symptoms) according to about that little magic book we call the DMS, now on its VI edition. Created by a mid that was not totally in proper equilibrium. And one can ask, how can a mind out of whack create an equilibrated view of the mind? Never mind, it mimicks an appropriate scientific requirement of “classification.”

So I spent most of my postgraduate life learning about my mind because the only way you can know first hand about the mind is studying your own. Lectures, talks, discussions, books etc. are “nice stuff” but leave aside your emotional self. And that is just a nice way of cheating your patients. -To say nothing of yourself! But as a future chief of a University Department of Psychiatry, it clearly and succinctly in astonishment for me when I invited him to do a therapeutic-looking exercise in a Training Group: “ME A PATIENT?”

OH MY LORD. Our male-narcissism prevents us from learning who we really are!! But it does not prevent us from “treating” others! WHAT AN INDECENT JOKE!!