I really do feel sorry for our in-house psychiatrist. The Clancey family are famously sound in both body AND mind, so he doesn’t really get to do very much. Sometimes I like to think I’ll go along and fake some kind of steady, psychotic breakdown, just so he’s not twiddling his thumbs. Still, he gets the bi-annual checkup for each of us, so that’s a grand total of two hours of work per year. Heaven knows how he manages to entertain himself.
I suppose it all stems back in time to when our family was gaining business success. Of course, our family’s first mansion was in Mornington, where the Clanceys first came to Australia. Great Grandfather Harrington made liberal use of this new-fangled profession of psychiatry, practices in Mornington having been set up a few years prior. People turned up their noses and thought little of it, but Great Grandfather Harrington bought into the idea of good mental health, and it’s placed us in good standing over our competitors ever since.
It was he who established a routine for good mental health: half an hour per day of discussing and reflecting on the day’s events, and half an hour of some serious self-talk of a positive nature. Everyone thought it was old toffee, and his business competitors spent all of their time making money from morning to night. Well…when they reached their limit and burned our, Great Grandfather Harrington was taking the advice of his personal psychiatrist and working into the hours of the morning, brain unfettered by cares and worries.
Such a great shame he forgot to go to the doctor had a retire shortly before his death due to exhaustion, but his mind was doing just fine right up until the end. Now we have an in-house doctor as well…obviously. Regardless of our peerless mental health, we must still remember that humble calling of psychology around Mornington. If only we could buy out the entire business. Alas, medicine retains certain privileges that place them above such things, and it’s probably for the best.
-Percival Clancey VI