Over the Borderline

Writers have bad readers; in private life, these critics are called psychiatrists. The catastrophe suffered by the lunatic is unlike that visited on any other patient. While the cardiologist, the oncologist, the gastroenterologist may be imperious and arrogant, refusing to listen to the poor ignorant civilian who has nothing at all to contribute to her own case, the psychiatrist does nothing but listen. He listens for hours, days, weeks, years as the patient unfurls her life before him: her perceptions, her emotions, what she takes to be the most significant events of her story. Then the doctor tells her that she is wrong. She does not understand her own story. She does not understand her own thoughts, her own senses or feelings or place in the world at all. She is wrong about herself. She is so wrong that she is sick.