Voice Post: “The Last Psychiatrist”
The elusive psychiatrist. At least, that’s what this psychiatrist is all about. Elusiveness. No name, no face, no seriously serious content. Yet strangely, their blog is full of informative, witty posts. How does an anonymous “psychiatrist” manage to write insulting controversial posts, all while being informative and engaging? Apparently, this elusive psychiatrist does so very, very well. With a relatively plain-looking monochromatic blog, a cryptic philosophical quote in German under the title, and the self-proclaimed title of the “last” psychiatrist, we know we’re delving a blog that is either really poignantly good, or really pompously bad. Turns out that Mr. Last Psychiatrist falls into neither category, while simultaneously falling into both. This is surely what he (or she) would like.
This witty psychiatrist writes about a whole wide spectrum of topics: psychology, news media, politics, food, beauty, books and movies — you name it. He also manages to make every single one of these subjects controversial. Or at least insulting to at least one person reading his blog. How exactly does he manage this? Let’s take a look.
The “last” psychiatrist writes about PTSD in the military. Seems like a normal, serious topic to write about. Except he (or she) is using Stars Wars as an example. The psychiatrist opens up the blog post by giving a line by line, commentated transcript of the scene from Stars Wars The Empire Strikes Back in which Han Solo pilots a Millenium Falcon being chased by Imperial troops, while carrying a very distressed Leia, Chewie, and C3PO aboard. He includes a couple of pictures of the characters making comical faces, and analyzes how each one shows their “true personalities revealed by trial.” His tone then immediately changes from conversational and humorous, to satirical yet serious analysis of a quote of a book recounting the experiences of war veterans. The rest of his blog post continues in this manner, and by the end he comes to the conclusion that the traumas of war accelerates PTSD. Very informative right? But along his whole post, he has managed to somehow bring the reader a greater understanding of PTSD in war. The last psychiatrist does give their reader valuable information, even when his goal is to be witty and sarcastic.
Let’s take a look at another one of his posts. This post is more academic then the last, though still interspersed with moments of wit and sarcasm. Here the psychiatrist writes about dealing with a patient. First, he gives the example of a woman who cannot see that the niceness shown to her is merely because she is highly attractive. She sees the kindness directed towards her as something that is inherent to a quality of the men that treat her nicely, and not as special treatment that is only directed to her because they desire her sexually. The psychiatrist explains that this is an example of not accurately interpreting reality. He then transitions into recounting the situation of a patient he treated, who felt guilty for actively pursuing his ex-girlfriend while she was in a relationship with another. Looking at this post as a whole, his witty voice is recognizable, but here the psychiatrist takes on a slightly more professional goal. He wants to give advice to other practicing psychiatrist on how to deal with patients that have some sort of warped view on interpreting reality. This is a prime example of the last psychiatrists voice: he gives subtly humorous opinions of psychology topics while at the same time being informative.
