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10,000 PSYCHIATRISTS COME TO PHILADELPHIA
What do you get when you put 10,000 shrinks in a room?
The American Psychiatric Association now meeting at Convention Center


How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?

Just possibly, all 10,000 who are in Philly for a big convention that started over the weekend.

But, of course, the light bulb has to want to change.

Perhaps you're frightened by the thought of thousands of psychiatrists crawling through Center City.

Maybe you have nightmarish visions of bearded, pipe-smoking, tweed-jacket-wearing Sigmund Freud-types walking around analyzing everything, trying to figure out why in Philly, even the Liberty Bell is cracked.

Is this something you'd like to talk about? Why don't you just lie down on that leather couch over there—all 10,000 doctors will be right in.

They're members of the American Psychiatric Association, in town for their annual meeting, and—along with as many as 9,000 others in the field - they'll be at the Convention Center this week.

We got an advance look at the schedule of seminars, and frankly, we didn't understand half of it. Most have strange titles like, "Predictors of Unipolar to Bipolar Conversion in Affective Disorders."

Is that crazy, or what?

There were some seminars, though, that got our attention.

Like the one that will discuss whether eating lots of meat, particularly sausages, can lead to depression.

Not for nothing, but this really bums us out.

Apparently, big sausage eaters don't get enough healthy food, like fish, that has certain chemicals that fight off depression.

C'mon, do they really have to have a seminar like this in Philly? Should we just go shoot ourselves now, or what?

On the other hand, there's a seminar titled, "Depravity at the Workplace."

Now, that's one that we here at the Daily News can identify with.

But there's also one called "Exploring the Media's Role in Imitation Violence."

Those shrinks are insane if they think we're going to write about that one.

There seems to be a seminar for everybody.

Like the one titled, "Assisting Physicians and Other Professionals Who Violate Boundaries."

What, they can't violate boundaries without help?

Kidding. We're kidding. Don't read anything into it.

And then there's one called "Presidential Assassination Syndrome Revisited."

That's sure to be a real picker-upper.

Maybe even as thrilling as the seminar, "Poems on Psychiatry."

Somehow, we never thought of shrinks as artistic types, but who knows? We've even written one ourselves, for the occasion:

We thought that we would never see
A poem about psychiatry
But with ten thousand shrinks on call
Guess Philly now has seen it all
That's OK with us, they've got their Freud
Just don't let 'em know we're paranoid.



More news stories will be posted soon.



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