Confrontations with the Fantasy Shrink Who Resides in My Head
The Author with Auntie, Summer 1968 _____________________________ “D IET.” Can you tell me how that word makes you feel? Oh, Lord. Don’t tell me you’re a Gestalt... No, Ms. Lee. Eclectic. Dabs of Freud, Jung, Horney, Skinner, Rogers, Ellis, and ‒ yes ‒ some Perls. I’d hate to think I’ve traveled all the way into my inner depths just to find a Cuckoo in a hot tub.... I like to think that I take the best of what psychiatry has to offer and give to my clients what they need. Now, then, where were we? “Diet.” Ah, yes. You were going to define that word for me. Well, maybe to ordinary people, “diet” is just another word in the English language, having one or two meanings, the primary denotative being, “to cause to take food” as a verb, and “food or drink regularly provided or consumed” as a noun. Then there is that lesser denotative meaning, a dieter’s term, which has to do with eating by prescribed rules established by doctors, nutritionists, families, peers, frie...