My Attorney, the
Jungian
by Vincent Barry
My
attorney wants to plead me “Not guilty by
reason of mental illness.”
“You’re a psychopath,” my attorney
says, before reassuring my gasp, “Oh, not
the violent, criminal kind,” and rattles off, “Elizabeth
Bathory, Jack the Ripper, . . ,” then adds
with a laugh, “Oh, I could go on, but I’m
sure to offend by leaving someone or other out.”
The aforesaid gallery were, apparently, “pure”
psychopaths. I, by contrast, am a run-of-the mill
psychopath, “The kind—,” my
attorney says illustratively, “that one’s
spouse might call one in a divorce hearing.”
“The hypothetical spouse,” my attorney
elaborates, “doesn’t mean that the
partner devours or makes soap of human flesh but
only that they are incapable of showing any love
or affection for anything but, say, golf.”
“My therapist,” I return meekly, “says
I’m neurotic.”
“Uh-huh,” my attorney distractedly nods,
“you could be that too— walk and chew
gum?” Then, “You feel compelled to
avoid sidewalk cracks, do you?— eat porridge
every morning precisely at 6 A.M.?
Rhetorically, speaking.”
We exchange head shakes.
“Were you so compelled,” my attorney
continues, “certainly, some—what are
called compensations— might be in order. . .
. Say, ‘Try walking with your head up,’
or ‘Must you always eat porridge at 6 A.M?’
Harmless enough advice— to the neurotic.
I mean what’s the worst that could happen? A
stiff neck? . . . corn flakes at 6:15 A.M? But
to you, your average psychopath—dismantling
the structures of the average psychopath? Whoa!
We’re talking— nitroglycerin here.”
“My therapist says,” I allow,
“I have a compulsive attention to duty.”
“Yes,” my attorney nods, “but born
with, you mean.”
“You mean like a birth defect?”
“Yes, yes, only in the brain— an empty
place, so to speak, that you are trying to fill
in—compulsively—in one way or
another.” Then leaning in conspiratorially,
“And the beauty of it: It’s incurable.”
“I’m an invalid,” I am thinking,
and, as if reading my mind, my attorney say,
“Exactly! All of us are. Before we learn to
walk we’re born with-with an inner limp, so
to say.”
“Which explains my compulsive attention to
duty?”
“Let me ask you this,” my attorney says
indulgently. “What did your therapist
recommend?”
Before I can answer, my attorney says, “Let
me guess.” Then, like throwing darts at a
board: “‘How about easing up a tad?’
‘Ever try stretching your lunch hour now and
then?’ ‘What about treating yourself to
a ‘sick day’?”
I’m amazed. “How did you know?”
“Well-intentioned advice,” my attorney
says with a smug smile, “but misguided . . .
So misguided that it explains, quicker than you
can say Adolf GuggenbÜhl-Craig, why you sent
your therapist a postcard from Bimini, where, and
I quote from the aforementioned, ‘I am
enjoying a well-earned vacation,’ with,
wisely omitted, BTW, ‘the bank’s funds.’”
I sheepishly nod.
“Why,” my attorney says with a
sly, confident smile, “you did everything
but sign: ‘Your Compensated Psychopath,’”
and gushes, “After acquittal, malpractice!”
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