Just Plain Nuts!

One of my favorite Far Side cartoons was of the goofy-looking character cluelessly babbling on while reclined upon a psychiatrist's couch and looking over the psychiatrist's shoulder the reader can see the psychiatrist scrawled "Just plain nuts!" on his notepad. Well, one has to wonder how much being immersed day in and day out with people who are nuts might also start to affect the psychiatrist's mental and emotional well-being.

So this story about French psychiatrists at the University of Toulouse (rhymes with "screw loose") gives a glimpse into just how close to the mental border this profession resides.

The psychs claim that their in absentia, post-mortem, en cinema et livre psych eval of Star Wars villain, Darth Vader, is merely to help educate those who read comic books (and never leave their mother's basement?) to understand mental illness in an effort to remove the associated stigma. Uh huh.

This was a perfect belittle-the-French story until I read on that a psychiatrist from the United States (of course, he IS from California) decided to debate their diagnosis arguing that Mr. Vader lacked many of the requisite factors for such a finding.

It appears the mental border is as easy to traverse as the Mexico/US border...northbound at least.