Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Parrot psychiatrist - or psychotherapist?

On a walk the other day, we got onto the subject of birdsong, then birds, and then I mentioned that a friend of mine is a parrot psychiatrist.

Jossie was a bit far behind, and only picked up on the "parrot psychiatrist" bit. She expressed surprise that a parrot could be a psychiatrist. Parrots are very bright, and a properly trained parrot could respond with 90% accuracy to a request to pick out a "Blue paper square" from a table covered with shapes of many colours and materials, but a psychiatrist has to have medical training...

After general discussion, we all agreed that probably it would be not advisable for a parrot to set out to be a psychiatrist, but that to a Rogerian psychotherapist would be an attainable goal, well within the vocabulary of a well trained parrot.

"Hello, How are you feeling today?"
"I'm sorry. What do you want to do about that?"
"No, I cannot answer for you. What do you want to do about it?"
"And how did that make you feel?"
"See you same time next week"

No comments: