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Mind Games
What's got into your head ? Ever since the pre-war days of Sigmund Freud, only psychologists, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts claim to know what is going on inside your mind.
Let us not forget that this is big business; however small the couch. There is hardly a well-off New Yorker, Parisian or Londoner who does not frequent a 'headshrinker'. It is almost a fashion as obligatory as the current colour of your Prado shoes.
There are 'special' schools in major capitals dedicated to psychology for adolescents and children. ( In Paris there is a centre for treating the the psyche of dogs).
Of course, there are a sad number of men and women who are genuinely disturbed in one or two areas of the brain. And thank goodness there are public hospitals and private clinics which try to help with these (sometimes) neurological problem patients.
Unfortunately, an increasing number of these establishments are diminishing in France, Britain and elsewhere. (The left-overs just find themselves on the streets).
An anonymous layman once guessed that the problem was that there were too many people with too many ideas in their single head revolving at the the same time and this made it more difficult for them to cope with the world.
In the 19th century in London, those who were considered 'mentally ill' were confined to 'Bedlam', often referred to as 'The madhouse' or 'The lunatic asylum'. (It is now the Imperial War Museum.)
Woody Allen, in many of his films, told his audience that he regularly visited his psychyoanalyst. Whether this was an encouragement or a deterrent, we do not know.
John Lennon, in his song 'Mind Games', summed up a psychiatrist as: "Some kind of druid dude ... (trying) ... to lift the veil".
