To all those who have successfully shed themselves of their psychotherapist; with all those who know the truth about “mental health professionals;” for all those who have yet to learn how sick they truly are: I am here for you.

There is nothing more humiliating than disclosing your private thoughts to a psychotherapist, just so that they can turn your arguments against you. Psychotherapists listen intently to your intimate whispers for the purpose of throwing them back in your face. They feign friendliness so that they can criticize you when you least expect it. They enjoy giving you a taste of your own medicine.

Once upon a time in my youth I feigned delusional schizophrenia in order to infiltrate an insane asylum and offer its patients treatment. Only as an insider would I be able to effectively disseminate my anti-psychiatric agenda. My roommate, we’ll call him Derrick, was institutionalized because he compulsively trespassed on University of California property. You see, Derrick was obsessed with his intelligence. He would attend university lectures on a motley of subjects, loiter in the student lounge, even attend office hours of his own volition — all the while interloping on university property. When professors discovered he wasn’t a student, they asked him to leave; when he obstinately returned, they called campus safety. Eventually, they had him arrested for trespassing. At his arraignment, he was declared not guilty by reason of insanity, and thereafter institutionalized. Derrick had a knack for attracting trouble.

Derrick’s obsession with his intelligence manifested in his speech patterns. He refused to speak the common tongue. Every sentence had to incorporate a hyperbole, or an affectation. If he wanted to say “pass the pancakes,” he’d feel compelled to say, “mummy dearest, can you please deliver to me the loaves?” Normal, commonplace language wasn’t good enough for Derrick; he needed to convey an alternative interpretation.

The psychotherapist that was treating Derrick erroneously concluded that Derrick was repressing childhood memories, specifically memories of him being ignored. Derrick’s conduct, according to his psychotherapist’s infinite wisdom, repressed childhood memories of Derrick being ignored. The psychotherapist conjectured that Derrick was ignored frequently as a child, even though Derrick vehemently denied remembering such instances. Her argument was that his bombastic language repressed feelings of worthlessness and inadequacy. He feared intimacy, so he tried to distance himself as much as possible using his words. — all according to this “professional.”

As you can probably tell, this shrink is madly in love with Derrick. And yes, she was madly in love with him. The avoidance of the subject, her all-too-subtle blushes, coupled with other confidential information Derrick disclosed to me that I will hold inviolately confidential — all of this betrayed what reason cannot: that she found Derrick’s mastery of the English language — overwhelming. You’re going to have to trust me on this one. Sometime during treatment the psychotherapist became infatuated with Derrick. Her point of attraction was Derrick’s mastery over language, at times speaking only in trochaic tetrameter, at other times deploying sentences with asyndeton combined with anaphora. You know what they say about big words, don’t you…

The psychotherapist fell in love with Derrick because he used wanton jargon; then she used this point of attraction to project her unrequited love back onto him. She loved Derrick, but she lacked a socially permissible way of expressing such love. She would lose all credibility as a mental health professional if she expressed to Derrick everything on her mind. Her inability to discharge her feelings towards Derrick unconsciously embittered her, and made her spiteful towards Derrick — as if he himself were the one imposing an injunction on their love. Derrick’s psychotherapist imputed Derrick as the cause of her aching heart. It’s not his fault that women keep on coming back for more.

Derrick, of course, is totally blameless in this matter. He can’t help that he was institutionalized against his will, and forced to talk to this bleeding heart. He didn’t ask to be introduced to a psychotherapist. The relationship was foisted onto him. She asked him the questions, she initiated contact, he never expressed open enthusiasm for the encounter; so how can we blame Derrick for eliciting this stranger’s fetish? How was Derrick supposed to know ahead of time she had a kink for a loose barrel of a tongue? It is society to blame, along with the APA professional code of conduct, which enjoins her from discharging her love — not Derrick. The psychotherapist unconsciously feels indignant towards Derrick because she associates him as the source of her discomfort.  

Thus, the psychotherapist unconsciously avenges her wounded pride. She projects her unrequited love by revealing to Derrick that he was ignored as a child. In reality, Derrick wasn’t ignored as a child. Rather, Derrick is ignoring her; or even better, society forces her to ignore her desires. Her conjecture about Derrick’s childhood functions as a socially acceptable way of libidinal discharge— albeit to the chagrin of her love object. The psychotherapist concealed all tokens of attraction, felt embittered when it wasn’t reciprocated, then avenged her righteous indignation! It’s as if she wanted to torture the poor fella. “I guess he wasn’t that smart after all,” she sighs to herself on her velvet leather coach. “I wanted to fix you.”

What’s dysfunctional about her love is that its sublimated expression — her conclusions about Derrick’s childhood — further alienate Derrick. Does she think that her criticisms arouse Derrick? Does she not feel any secondhand shame denuding Derrick’s “forgotten” past? Is this her way of talking dirty? The psychotherapist’s radical discovery of Derrick’s repressed memories should woo him; instead, it distances him even further. Either she’s distancing herself from Derrick as revenge, or she’s playing hard to get.

It could very well be the case that her conclusions function to avenge her unrequited love; but that does not exclude the possibility that reproaches do in fact arouse Derrick. Derrick may be a rare individual who finds humiliation titillating. This is her unconscious hope: she unconsciously hopes that humiliation arouses Derrick, and that she can reproach him further in the privacy of her own home.  The psychologist’s criticism serves a double function: not only is it a means of exacting revenge, but as a means of seduction, it also projects a hope that Derrick, too, likes it rough.

In summa: Derrick’s psychoanalyst obsessed over Derrick’s childhood trauma of being ignored, for the purpose of repressing her love for Derrick. She unconsciously designed her reproaches for the purpose of embarrassing Derrick. (who among us wouldn’t feel embarrassed if some stranger, who we barely know anything about, came clamoring to us about memories in which we know nothing about? How dare some psychoanalyst claim to know more about our past than we do.) The purpose of her reproaches remained unconscious to her because her unconscious acted upon an instinctual drive for justice: Derrick deserved, in her mind, to feel just as embarrassed as she.

If, however, the psychotherapist was aware that her reproaches embarrassed Derrick, and nevertheless unraveled her tongue, she should definitely be reported to the APA ethics committee. People who consciously inflict pain on others are called sado-masochists. These people enjoy both giving and receiving pain. They should be identified, detained, and isolated with diligence. You never know what’ll get them off.

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Whatever became of Derrick and his psychotherapist? I can’t say. Before Derrick’s treatment concluded, I was ratted out by one of my patients, “Parrot Man.” The warden kicked me out of my own institution and forebade me to return. After awhile I attempted to locate Derrick based on the confidential information he disclosed to me, to no avail. For all I know he absconded with his psychotherapist, and now lives in a Santa Monica harbor, sailing the open seas with the only woman who ever understood him. They could have, alternatively, gone their separate ways — he attending another university’s lectures, she reading erotica novels alone by her beside. “Let us end our estrangement,” she betrays in her slumber, “and become something more than friends — something more than – strangers to ourselves.” Hard man to find, that Derrick.

I’m telling you about my patient Derrick so that you too, can protect yourselves against mental health professionals. Mental health has been a prevailing conversation in society which will be, in my estimation, intensifying in the coming decades. People want to do what’s best for their mental health, and who wouldn’t! That’s why my heart bleeds for my neighbors and colleagues who attempt to seek a cure in the form of a shrink: they think their therapist will provide them with solutions, when all they’re good for is creating more problems! Reading this is literally the best thing you can do for your mental health.