“Oh, laddie, go tell it to the Marines!”
In the mid-70s, I attended a full day seminar by the wonderfully eccentric, British psychiatrist R.D. Laing. At one point in his address, given before an audience of rather tight-assed, Calgary, Alberta, psychiatric professionals, he explained what the term, hubris, meant to him. It was a wonderful, dramatic moment. And while I no longer have my notes, I recall the scene clearly.
Laing stood on a stage before a microphone, no podium, no notes. There were several hundred in attendance. “Hubris,” he said in his Scottish brogue, “means to miss the mark. Let me illustrate it more literally. Imagine that I am a Greek archer and my target lies behind you at the back of this auditorium.” He pointed over the audience toward the rear exits. Some heads turned.
“Now, he said, “I am the Greek archer.” Slowly, he raised his imaginary bow. Just as slowly, he drew the bowstring back to his cheek. Then, deliberately and carefully, he began to turn until his back was to the audience, the “bow” still held in position. “And now,” he said, “I release the arrow.”
Again, slowly, he turned to face the audience. “And that, ladies and gentlemen, is modern psychiatry. The target is out there,” pointing to the exits, “and we are loosing our arrows there,” waving to stage rear. He had alienated his audience, of course, and spent the rest of the afternoon jousting with them.
Last night, was a restless, sleepless night, and my thoughts turned to this memory of Laing and to the arrows loosed internationally and domestically by the Bush administration. The end of the old year and beginning of the new used to be a time to take stock, to determine which marks were hit, which were missed, and more important, were the targets appropriate in the first place? I could be wrong, but I don’t think this type of assessment is practiced much anymore. Too bad.
Wonderful image, from this psychiatrist’s favorite anti-psychiatrist. And applying Laing’s incisive irreverence to my favorite target, the risible Bush administration…
