I almost always feel that the response “Pardon My Planet” really wants is “Huh?”
Another boring case, so, instead of listening to her, he was browsing the internet on his tablet. The details (Pinterest / DIY post) probably mean that her case is even more boring than usual.
There’s also the cliche about psychoanalysis, that the therapist refuses to tell the patient anything, they just ask leading questions and reflect all the patient’s comments back at them. (“So, you always wished you had learned to play the piano? Is this related to the fact that your sister is a guitar player?”)
This particular cliche cartoon analyst totally violates that expectation by just declaring he has solved a basic problem of philosophy and will now hand her a life-altering insight directly, and that the problem was so easy he found the answer by accident while thinking about something else.
Psychoanalysis per se isn’t really much of a thing these days, but this is a syndicated cartoon and not required to reflect the present.
Maybe he is hinting that she is beyond his help and she will have to figure it out on her own, or in other words, DIY.
Is she a control freak in this comic? Maybe he just means since she complains about everyone she should just DIY.
carlfink: Ever use ELIZA?
@Phill Smith III
Is it important to you that carlfink has ever used ELIZA?
@jglor You say carlfink has used ELIZA.
Inside GEmacs, in the elisp interactive interface, not only was there an Eliza implementation, but also a little function that would give you one-liners from Zippy. Hook them up to each other, and you’ve got psychoanalyze-pinhead!
@Phil Smith III
How does it make you feel that I say carlfink has used ELIZA?
(Last one, I promise)
@jglor Tell me more.
(Yes, we should stop! Gotta love ELIZA, though.)
Just picked up the book from the library, ‘Nobody’s fool : the life and times of Schlitzie the Pinhead’, who acted in the movie, ‘Freaks’, and who was the inspiration for Zippy. Now, is THAT personal synchronization, or what?
@carlfink: So, problems easily solved? — Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly. . . Just you wait!
(Oops. Wrong “Eliza.”)
I find the cliche of the patient lying down at therapy so overused and boring, and a bit of a passive-aggresive stigmatization of therapy in general. That’s not how it works, that’s not how any of it works. Like any provider appointment, the patient sits across from the provider and talks, hence the term “talk therapy.” Erase the stigma, bad cartoonists!
Having gone thru over 30 years of talk therapy, I agree . . .
Lying on a couch in a position where the patient can’t see the analyst is, however, exactly what Freud recommended. As I said upthread, the cartoonist is representing Freudian analysis correctly-ish, it’s just that no respectable therapist takes psychoanalysis seriously now.
Comics I Don't Understand 
I almost always feel that the response “Pardon My Planet” really wants is “Huh?”
Another boring case, so, instead of listening to her, he was browsing the internet on his tablet. The details (Pinterest / DIY post) probably mean that her case is even more boring than usual.
There’s also the cliche about psychoanalysis, that the therapist refuses to tell the patient anything, they just ask leading questions and reflect all the patient’s comments back at them. (“So, you always wished you had learned to play the piano? Is this related to the fact that your sister is a guitar player?”)
This particular cliche cartoon analyst totally violates that expectation by just declaring he has solved a basic problem of philosophy and will now hand her a life-altering insight directly, and that the problem was so easy he found the answer by accident while thinking about something else.
Psychoanalysis per se isn’t really much of a thing these days, but this is a syndicated cartoon and not required to reflect the present.
Maybe he is hinting that she is beyond his help and she will have to figure it out on her own, or in other words, DIY.
Is she a control freak in this comic? Maybe he just means since she complains about everyone she should just DIY.
carlfink: Ever use ELIZA?
@Phill Smith III
Is it important to you that carlfink has ever used ELIZA?
@jglor You say carlfink has used ELIZA.
Inside GEmacs, in the elisp interactive interface, not only was there an Eliza implementation, but also a little function that would give you one-liners from Zippy. Hook them up to each other, and you’ve got psychoanalyze-pinhead!
@Phil Smith III
How does it make you feel that I say carlfink has used ELIZA?
(Last one, I promise)
@jglor Tell me more.
(Yes, we should stop! Gotta love ELIZA, though.)
Just picked up the book from the library, ‘Nobody’s fool : the life and times of Schlitzie the Pinhead’, who acted in the movie, ‘Freaks’, and who was the inspiration for Zippy. Now, is THAT personal synchronization, or what?
@carlfink: So, problems easily solved? — Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly. . . Just you wait!
(Oops. Wrong “Eliza.”)
I find the cliche of the patient lying down at therapy so overused and boring, and a bit of a passive-aggresive stigmatization of therapy in general. That’s not how it works, that’s not how any of it works. Like any provider appointment, the patient sits across from the provider and talks, hence the term “talk therapy.” Erase the stigma, bad cartoonists!
Having gone thru over 30 years of talk therapy, I agree . . .
Lying on a couch in a position where the patient can’t see the analyst is, however, exactly what Freud recommended. As I said upthread, the cartoonist is representing Freudian analysis correctly-ish, it’s just that no respectable therapist takes psychoanalysis seriously now.