Wednesday, March 02, 2011

Of Hot Stoves and Paranoid Schizophrenics

Freud loved Jewish humor. One of his favorite Jewish jokes was the following:

A rabbi has a beautiful young wife and many young students living in his house.  One day the rabbi returns home to find his favorite student kissing his wife.  The rabbi turns to his wife to accuse her, but she pleads with him that the pupil does not know what he is doing, he is sick. "Then why isn't he kissing the hot stove!"

I have been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia.  Despite my long history of entanglements with law enforcement I have never gotten arrested.  Most of my peculiar behaviors seem goal-directed and often benefit me in some way.  I think the forensic psychiatrist Raymond Patterson, M.D. would ask about me: "If he's so crazy, why has he never kissed a hot stove?"

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