Revisionism

He’s tall and slender and sounds like Barack Obama. So when you’re sitting in his tiny office, you sometimes giggle when he’s talking because it feels like the President is your therapist.

He’s not very good at his job. He takes copious notes while you’re talking, like an overeager college freshman, giving the impression that he isn’t really listening at all. He mispronounces people’s names. He gives you an odd assortment of handouts with graphs and crap on them. You throw them away because, I mean, come on… He’s not even a therapist by trade; he’s an engineer or something, but he was recommended to you because you’re poor and troubled and because real therapists are expensive. See, mental health is a rich person luxury–like golf or litigation.

He cannot not help you, this imposter. Most cannot. Sometimes you wonder what Freud would have said about you, or Adler, or Klein. But then again, you think psychoanalysis is a bunch of fluff, anyways. Somebody told you once that the entire field of mental health is a trite Americanism. She was wrong, of course, but she was also right.

So you make an appointment for the same time next week.