I have been reading a book about Richard Feynman, a Nobel Prize winning physicist who worked on the Manhattan project to build an atomic bomb for the US during the Second World War.
There are a lot of funny stories in the book (“Surely You’re Joking, Mr. Feynman?”) At one point he was supposed to join the army. But he had to pass a medical check up first. The check up included being interviewed by a psychiatrist. It is supposed to be a quick and simple test, but somehow it starts to go wrong. I have shortened and edited the story below.
Edited extract from the book, “Surely you’re joking, Mr. Feynman?”:
I sit down at the desk, and the psychiatrist starts looking through my papers. "Hello, Dick!" he says in a cheerful voice. "Where do you work?"
I'm thinking, "Who does he think he is, calling me by my first name?" and I say coldly, "New York."
"Who do you work for, Dick?" says the psychiatrist, smiling again.
"General Electric."
"Do you like your work, Dick?" he says, with that same big smile on his face.
“So so,” I say.
Three nice questions, and then the fourth one is completely different. "Do you think people talk about you?" he asks, in a low, serious tone.
I light up and say, "Sure! When I go home, my mother often tells me how she was telling her friends about me." He isn't listening to the explanation. Instead, he's writing something down on my paper.
Then again, in a low, serious tone, he says, "Do you think people stare at you?” I'm all ready to say no, when he says, “For instance, do you think any of the boys waiting on the benches are staring at you now?"
While I had been waiting to talk to the psychiatrist, I had noticed there were about twelve guys on the benches waiting for the three psychiatrists, and they've got nothing else to look at, so I say, "Yeah, maybe two of them are looking at us."
He's busy writing more things on my paper. Then he says, "Do you ever hear voices in your head?"
"Very rarely."
I'm about to describe the two occasions on which it happened when he says, "Do you talk to yourself?"
"Yeah, sometimes when I'm shaving, or thinking. Once in a while."
He's writing down more stuff. "I see you have a deceased wife.Do you talk to her?"
This question really annoyed me, but I contained myself and said, "Sometimes, when I go up on a mountain and I'm thinking about her." More writing.
Finally, at the end of all these questions, he becomes friendly again. He lights up and says, "I see you have a Ph.D., Dick. Where did you study?"
"MIT and Princeton. And where did you study?”
“Yale and London. And what did you study, Dick?"
"Physics. And what did you study?"
"Medicine."
"And this is medicine?"
"Well, yes. What do you think it is? You go and sit down over there and wait a few minutes!"
So I sit on the bench again. While I'm waiting, I look at the paper which has the summary of all the tests I've taken so far, and it looks pretty serious! The psychiatrist wrote: Thinks people talk about him. Thinks people stare at him. Auditory hallucinations. Talks to self. Talks to deceased wife. Very peculiar stare. (I knew what that was. That was when I said, "And this is medicine?")
*
I shall remember this story if anyone ever
tells me that I’m mad.
Vocabulary:
a psychiatrist – a kind of doctor
specialising in mental illness
to light up – of a person, to suddenly
become interested and animated
deceased - dead
to contain yourself – to hold back a
negative feeling, such as anger
a Ph.D. – A high level university degree,
which makes you a Doctor of Philosophy
auditory – of or related to sound
a hallucination – an experience of feeling,
seeing or hearing something which is not really happening
peculiar – strange; odd
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