the shrink's office

Perhaps the most depressing part about a psychiatrist's office is that it has become a medical McDonald's serving medication. The time constraints compounded by the medical profession's inherent inability to deal with social problems makes this one of the saddest places to visit. Psychiatry has essentially reduced human suffering to the brain because it is much easier to throw medication at the brain than it is to deal with the complexity of people's lives. The most insidious part of all of this is that patients and physicians alike come to believe in the power of medication.

I try not to be so pessimistic about this but this is what psychiatry has become. You can speak of genetic predispositions, chemical imbalances, or even the glory of psycho- and behavior cognitive therapy but in the end, you are still dealing with a spiritual creature. Psychiatry categorizes disorders with nice lists. Meet 5 of 8 of these conditions for 6 months and you have this episode or that personality disorder. People were never meant to be viewed in this manner. But, psychiatry protests and fights back. It tries to defend its validity with more diagnostic criteria, more brain studies, and more drug trials that show "progress." It kicks and screams while its progeny stare back with their flat, constricted, ghost-like affect.