I have been accused by several friends and acquaintances of being anti-intellectual (I can’t win), and also of being “against psychiatrists.” I don’t really think I am. That would be as silly as being “against dentists” or “against barbers.” I do think that psychiatry is still a very young science, not unlike surgery when the surgeons were barbers. If you absolutely had to have a leg amputated in the seventeenth century, you went to a barber; you didn’t rush to him for a scratch. I’ve seen psychiatry save and redeem. I’ve also seen people going year after year to psychiatrists or therapists and growing steadily more self-centered. Most of us like being the center of the universe; no wonder these people don’t want to give up their bi-weekly sessions.
~ Madeleine L’Engle, in A Circle of Quiet (NY: Harper, 1972), pages 46-47
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