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The drama had its origin in sacrificial rites involving goats and scapegoats. Today it uses the psychiatrist as a scapegoat.
Yes, this plaint clatters from the typewriter of a psychiatrist. It seems to me that too often when a mental specialist walks onstage he is made the “patsy.” Is he permitted to function as a diagnostician or therapist? Rarely. In play after play the psychiatrist is cast as a fool, a clown, a sadist, a devil or a deity. Sometimes he is a cartoon-like figure, held up to ridicule along with his supposedly occult science. Sometimes he is depicted as deliberately cruel or deceitful to his patients. Sometimes one sees the reflection of Trilby's Svengali, other times the shadow of the fairy Amazona, who gave a nosegay to the princess. So long as the princess had it on her person, those who knew her before could not recognize her.
Now many will argue that misrepresentation in modern drama is not reserved for psychiatrists alone. Newspaper reporters have waxed vituperatively flip about the characterizations of reporters in The Front Page and its successors. Ask an adolescent how he feels about the way adolescents are shown onstage, or a schoolteacher about school people, or even a Dutch uncle about Dutch uncles. The mantle of scapegoat would probably be clamored for by each.
Further, I will be reminded that a dramatist does not try to show things as they are, doesn't mirror but intensifies life. Since he must lead his audiences through exciting emotional