First Meeting With A Psychiatrist Comments

You are perhaps the most deft poet I have encountered on PH. Your works reads as the work of an polished professional (which you must be) . I look forward to reading more of your work.

Truly an obscured reality, exposing the ambivalence on the part of the Psychiatric patient and emotional flattening on the part of the Psychiatrist. Being a Physician and Psychiatry Resident, I should endorse; what Philippa has so remarkably expressed in this poem. We Psychiatrist may become so cold and indifferent over the time to the misery of those extraordinary minds, which deserves so much empathy. And this is also true with population at large, as so called healthy and normal minds most of the times treat extraordinary or popularly known as abnormal or insane minds with indifference. So sad that we proudly pronounce ourselves humans, but we are deluding as we have lost humanity. Great work done by Philippa Lane. Thanks a lot.

Hi, Philippa, I found this poem, written many years before the other I've read of yours, to resound with the same power. I feel you were simply describing your experience, not stereotyping a psychiatrist. Perhaps this psychiatrist was stereotyping himself. You have a facility for expressing raw emotions in powerful lines and images!

I liked the originality of the topic and the switch to Africa and back again. However, I think psychiatrists are an easy target and you're description of this one fits the fairly common stereotype. Sounds like you walked in with a skeptical attitude and walked out with about what you expected to get.

I'm glad you were still around to put the date in, Philippa! ! No cure, no fee? Thanks!