The sad thing about this cartoon is that it is an apt image of how the public sees psychiatry. I understood why anyone with these views would as be afraid of getting help as some fundamentalist would be of being vaccinated to avoid God’s will.
Before we had Skinner’s scientific methods and then later before we had drugs, the mythological imagery of Freud surely must have scared people. These things change. psychoactive drugs do work and the science of describing behavioral diseases, even when we do not yet have cures, is proceeding very rapidly.
Sadly, even with scientific methods and good drugs too many people still fear getting the help they need. Every couple of months some disturbed person get himself a gun and kills people or commits suicide. Most of these people are not legally insane. The weirdest part of this may be that the very ill, the psychotics, get help and those who can afford fashionable counseling do as well. The folks who really need help .. the people who live with hatred of others, fantasies about Jews and Blacks, demons among their friends and family, …they seem to enjoy their illnesses too much not to revel in thinking of psychiatrists as being the carnivorous Dr. Lecter. Oh well.