where they teach you to scream at your horrible mother only when she is not there to mess you up,' he added, his shaking hands trying to play with the chain across his enormous paunch, his head nodding to all sides.
'Well, in my forty years in this mind-blowing business, 1 have known only two sorts of people: those who suffer because they have no system in their life and are drifting like slime on muddy water, or those who have a bloody rigid system which made them shit bricks and gave them hemorrhoids too! Well, 1 tell you! Give some backbone to the first and enlarge the arsehole of the second.'
The man spoke slowly. The constant shaking of his head made the words come out in jerks. But there was no mistaking the bitterness in his disapproving face. There was also the self-pity of those who reached the end of the road.
All the same, the unconventional, unsolicited advice struck a chord in Walter's heart and he followed it continuously in dealing with his patients. It meant a painstaking effort on his part to find out everything possible about his patients' background, the culture in which they grew up, the effects of their environment on their behavior, all in order to destructure and restructure their lives He did not try to play God. He had no church to guide him. But he did his utmost to build one for the shaky and demolish one for the rigid. It was like a balancing act which required the ingenuity of an acrobat. Ale slightest lapse of attention to the smallest detail would bring him and his patient crashing down. And he knew the score. He was not only risking his patients but his own self-esteem as well.
In the elevator he found himself with Bill Gardener, another partner in the clinic. In his mind he nicknamed Bill 'Poker Face' on account of the fact that Bill's face revealed nothing. Bill shared that quality with many psychiatrists. Walter had noticed that some of them begin to develop it during their training in mental wards. Somehow people expect that from you. A smiling psychiatrist is almost an obscenity. However, with Bill Gardener it was worse. Even when he smiled Bill revealed no affection, or mirth, or approval, or any of the pleasant feelings human beings are capable of showing. Of all ...