A silver-haired man, still wet from swimming, sits in an NHS consulting room and nervously declares to a clinical neuropsychologist that he's always been “ditzy”. When he can't repeat an adequate number of words from a string in an assessment test, a future of degeneration looms.
Parents arrive at a hospital meeting without their ten-year-old son, “a big delinquent baby”, who has refused to attend, though it is he who needs assessment. Their narrative about the boy won't coalesce into a single story: the mother noisily accuses the father, who denies any emotion. He speaks of an elaborate train-set he has bought. The boy has dramatically used its junctures to deliver a version of ECT. The clinician has a strong sense that the problem lies in the parents' relations, not just with the child.
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