Hallucinosis

So I'm watching last night's episode of House on the DVR (because, of course, last night was not a House call....if you will....sorry, I'm tired). And House has, over the last episode or two, developed this tag-along hallucination of his best friend's dead girlfriend. Whom, incidentally, I hated when she was on the show the first time, but I like her a lot more as a hallucination. So, she's this representation of his subconscious, but one he can talk to and interact with.

This is a totally fascinating construct to me.

I'm giving this talk tomorrow on dissociative identity disorder, right, to the first year residents, so I've been going over all this stuff and doing these slides and have a part in there where I talk about how the alters are (in object relations terms) split-off parts of the principle and typically have "jobs", or rather, parceled-out bits of emotion and affect which they're responsible for processing, containing, or decontaminating. It's interesting to look at the way the writers have set this up, in that context.

I know, that was mostly a lot of psychobabble.

Y'all, I'm really tired.

I do have to say, though, I'm SO COMPLETELY irritated with their medical advisers. ECT is safe. It's not for psychosis. And why couldn't he work if he was taking antipsychotics? Seriously. Call a psychiatrist. And pay attention to your social responsibility - do you know how many of my patients come in and talk about stupid things they saw on House?

Alright, fine. I give up. I'm going to bed.