“So, tell me, what is your personal paradise?” asks the psychiatrist.
“Um… well, being a religious man, I’d have to say heaven,” replies the patient
“No, no. Make it a personal thing. What surroundings would make you most happy, comfortable, at home… pleased?”
“Well… I guess…”
The psychiatrist interrupts, but is speaking under his breath, “Say heaven again and I’ll throttle you.”
“What was that?”
“Nothing… think something other than heaven, if you would.”
“Well. I guess it’d have to be a nice place. Like uh… Hawaii or something. I’d be on my own personal beach, away from all the crowds and stuff, but surrounded by my family and friends. Maybe coworkers too… well, some of them. Just the ones I like. And there’d be a pretty house behind us where we could cool off and stuff, and it’d be surrounded by palm trees with coconuts growing on them. There’d be the ocean and stuff, clear as could be… and everyone would be happy and enjoying themselves. Oh, and there’d also be a bonfire that we could sit around. And it would be, like uh… dusk. Light enough to see and swim and stuff, but dark enough to be able to sit around the fire and sing and laugh and… do bonfire things. I guess it would kinda be like heaven, only… well, like a personal heaven.”
The psychiatrist quivers for a second, a sneer forming on his face. “Do you have any idea how cliché that is?”
“Excuse me?”
“Your paradise… that’s been so done before. Why don’t you come up with something good, or are you just dull?"
“Say, I paid you to…”
“I don’t care what you paid me for,” interrupts the psychiatrist, yelling with increasing fury. “I’m sick and tired of hearing the same dream, every bloody time that a patient comes in here. It’s always, ‘oh, I’m so boring, I wanna live on an island,’ or, ‘oh, all that matters to me is my family, so I’d be around them.’ It’s enough to make a man sick, listening to the same drivel everyday.”
“But…”
“Don’t interrupt me! Furthermore, I always get morons like you coming in here. Just average Joes complaining about some stupid marital problems that are caused because they’re too ignorant to pay attention to their wives, or some whining loser that cant work up the guts to just quit his dead end job that’s making him unhappy… not crazy, just unhappy. Why can’t I get some interesting patients? I want a grade A schizophrenic! One with thirty different competing personalities that I can work on for ages! One with new personalities forming and bouts of insanity every day. Or maybe just some clinically insane freak that claims he is the messiah, and believes it to his core! That is what I want! I want exciting psychology! Psychology on the brink of major discoveries about the mind! Enough of this drivel! Out, insolent fool! Out!”
Waving his arms and brandishing the clipboard like a bludgeon, the psychiatrist runs the patient out of the room, still yelling like a madman. The patient runs out, shielding his head from the blows the psychiatrist’s clipboard. The door closes on his office with a slam.
The psychiatrist drops the clipboard and sits down in the patient’s chair. A tear forms in his eye. “I know I’ll get fired for that… but that was the most beautiful thing I’ve ever experienced.”