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The last time I wore a tie - © Jorgan Harris

My problem with psychology

The last time ever I wore a tie

I hate being tied down. It really suffocates me all around my neck. It just awakes the rebellious child inside me far too much. I really hate the idea of going for years of therapy, not to mention the faked empathy of most psychologists. I feel like vomiting when a client is constantly being asked: and how do you feel about it?

Call me a rebel, but I do not do psychology the way psychology normally is supposed to be conducted.

However, I grew up in a family of psychologists, of which my father is one. My father was also a minister of religion. Thus, psychology comes naturally to me since I could say Freud and Jung even before I could say Mommy and Daddy.

It never was my intention to study Psychology at university. I have signed up for a B-Com degree in personnel management, as a psychologist recommended me to do. Industrial Psychology was a compulsory subject for this course.

Six weeks into the course, I got my calling to study Theology, to become a minister of religion, just like my father. Fortunately, I was sort of forced to keep Industrial Psychology as a subject should I not be able to major my degree with advanced Greek and Hebrew. I did indeed acquire my degree with Industrial Psychology and Philosophy as majors. I was now qualified to go to the Angel Factory (seminary).

Somehow, I did not feel holy enough for the seminary and decided to rather play for time to grow up in order to get holy. I decided to do an honours in Psychology. However, I had to do a bridging course from Industrial Psychology to Clinical Psychology to enable me to do my Honours in Clinical Psychology. I was reasoning that I would be able to serve my congregation better with more knowledge of psychology! However, after my honours, I still didn’t feel holy enough and tried to gain even more time.

At this point in time, I just could not understand the tirade against so-called humanism, the Heidelberg Catechism and the Dortian rules of doctrine, anyway.

I had no choice than to apply for a master’s degree in Clinical Psychology. I was fortunate enough to get selected for the Master’s degree in Clinical Psychology. After the completion of my degree, I obviously had to do my internship. After my internship I realised: I am now a psychologist, completely unplanned. I still don’t want to preach and also do not fancy delivering pizzas either.

Since the first days of my psychology studies, I was wearing the label as rebel around my neck, and still do. I’m actually quite happy to fit into the so-called social contract. But when something goes the wrong way, when it jumps down my wrong throat, I tend to bring it up to spit it out. I choke far too much and easily to psychology and then vomit psychodynamics up my throat and out my mouth.

I was questioning my professors far too much, clashed too often with my trainers. I could not swallow the so-called pathology model at all. After yet another departmental meeting regarding the case of Jorgan Harris, I was fed-up and decided to leave Potch to complete my internship at Stellenbosch University’s Stikland Psychiatric Hospital. I needed a change.

I thought things would be different in Cape Town, but alas… oh alas … oh no! No go.

Having arrived in Stellenbosch, I immediately had my neck in the noose once again. Male interns were required to wear a tie during the ward rounds, every Monday at Tygerberg Hospital. Rounds where doctors, psychiatrists, psychologists, occupational therapists and other health workers gathered to discuss important matters about so-called sick patients. Patients whose reality may perhaps be different from ours.

Psychologists, for some reason, had to assert themselves amongst medical specialists and other important health care workers.

Psychologists in Tygerberg hospital aimlessly wandered around the wards in white coats that just got stuck in my throat. I just thought they were trying just too hard to be clinicians too. As if doctor status could be wrapped in a white coat.

I grew up in a house where my father was a minister where I was forced to wear a tie every Sunday – for reasons I did not understand. The more I was protesting about the tie, the more I got silenced and bluntly told: you WILL wear a tie, on Mondays. Sunday has now become the new Monday.

One morning, I think it was a Tuesday – all the male staff at the hospital got called to help to force a new patient into submission. He was just been diagnosed with severe hallucinations and delusions. He was wrestling with the chairs next to him, as strong as a beast. He was hallucinating frightening faces in front of him. We had to wrestle him down, in order to administrate an anesthetic to calm him down. Since we could not see the faces he was seeing, there were thus no faces, and he had to be sedated. He was out of control and sweat pearled anxiously all over his face. My important colleagues knew on his behalf what reality really was and we brutally had to pin him down for his injection.

Not too moved by the medical’s aggressive approach, I just went to get a wet cloth to wipe the sweat off his forehead and cheeks, after which he completely calmed down. Force was no longer necessary. The smart people call it reality contact and the psychiatrist could admit him without any injections, force or coercion.

I was just being obliquely looked at, without any recognition or realisation that sometimes things can be perceived and done differently. Sometimes things are easier than what it appears to be.

The weekend before the next Monday-Tie-Parade, I visited Green Market Square to buy myself a new tie for this important-feeling occasion. I found the most ridiculous tie and bought it right there and then. It was a bright neon-yellow tie with a picture of a vulture neatly engraved saying: Gimme a break! Just what I needed!

That Monday morning, I tied myself once again firmly around my neck, but this time with a new tie, perfectly dressed as required. However, I made sure that my colour schemes did not match at all. I appeared a bit like a clown. But I was wearing a tie. Furthermore, my behaviour was impeccable, as was expected of me as a professional.

The most important psychiatrist, told me that my tie might cause epilepsy patients to trigger seisures due to its’ blinding neon colours. However, I am wearing a tie. Tidy. Clinical. As required! What’s the problem?

After the end of the ward round, I left and started to walk down the passage with a catatonic schizophrenic standing right in front of me. As catatonic schizophrenics are doing, he was just standing there – frozen, dead for hours in the same physical position.

That statute gave my tie one look, and suddenly started to move and uttered: Doctor, I love your tie, doctor. And froze again into his new position. I have to confess, though – I may have been startled just like him, if not more – he for my exquisite, life changing tie and me for his sudden, unexpected movement!

And that was the moment I also became a doctor, not wearing a white coat, but with a life-changing silly tie. My all-knowing, highly educated and white-collared colleagues could not get him to move for months, and now I, the rebel, got him moving just like that, spontaneously, motivated by a canary-yellow tie with a vulture on.

Perhaps it should be better for epilepsy sufferers, delusionalists and catatonic schizophrenics to be intoxicated and injected to stay where they are and to be what we want them to be.

The Friday before the following Monday, we received a memorandum stating:

…. after deliberation, male Interns are no longer expected to wear a tie during ward rounds.

That was the last time I was tied.

 
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