“I Am a Psyche-atrist”
Photograph by John Diamond, M.D.
In Medicine
I am an alienist.
And in Psychiatry
– and psychiatrists were called alienists –
I am still an alienist,
for the name of our profession
is a perversion.
Psyche meant Soul,
now only mind.
And I am a psyche-atrist:
attempting to help others – and myself –
to our Souls,
to alleviate our anguish.
Freud, I believe,
called this the “new profession.”
