Sunday, December 23, 2012

Santa accuses a malicious contemptible fraud

The TV is showing Miracle on 34th Street, and it is one of the great movies against forensic psychiatry. In one scene, Santa tells off the company shrink:
KRIS: I have great respect for psychiatry… and great contempt for meddling amateurs who go around practicing it. You have no more right to analyze Alfred… than a dentist has to remove a gallbladder!

SAWYER: I beg your pardon.

KRIS: Your job here, I understand, is to give intelligence tests. Pressing yourself off as a psychologist. You ought to be horsewhipped… taking a normal, impressionable boy like Alfred… and filling him up with complexes and phobias.

SAWYER: I think I’m better equipped to judge that than you are.

KRIS: Just because the boy wants to be kind to children… you tell him he has a guilt complex.

SAWYER: Sharing his delusion, you couldn’t possibly understand. The boy is definitely maladjusted, and I’m helping.

KRIS: Maladjusted?! You talk about maladjusted. It seems to me the patient is running the clinic here.

SAWYER: I won’t stand… Leave this office immediately.

KRIS: Now either you stop analyzing Alfred… or I go straight to Mr. Macy… and tell him what a malicious contemptible fraud you are.

SAWYER: Leave or I’ll have you thrown out.

KRIS: There’s only one way to handle a man like you. You won’t listen to reason. You’re heartless. You have no humanity.
Kris (Santa Claus) is extremely nice to everyone else in the movie. His putdowns are entirely appropriate for the forensic psychologists. I couldn't have said it better myself.

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