This hilarious Jon Rappoport story so much reminds me of my first “CAS” (Challenge to Authority) episode (see below). It was the late ’60s, and I was waking up inside my stultifying marriage. Patrick wouldn’t talk to me. So I asked him if we could see a counselor. “You go,” he said. “You’re the one with the problem. You must be crazy.”

So, I thought, why not? I might learn something.

I called to make an appointment with a “psychiatrist” at the MIT counseling center (Patrick was then a student there).

At 1 p.m. on a Wednesday afternoon, a tall young man saw me into his office, sat me down, returned to the other side of his giant desk, and sat down. “Now, what’s the problem?” he intoned, in a trained, reassuring manner.

I told him that I wanted my husband to see a counselor with me, but he refused. Whatever “the psychiatrist” said next must have moved me off dead center, because I started to grill him on the assumptions that he used in his psychiatric practice. Relentlessly, I started to bore into him, question after question, and got no satisfying answers. During that ten or twenty minute period, I noticed that he had started to back up his chair, inch by inch, further and further, until it hit the wall! At which point he stood up, announced I was fine, “perfectly normal,” that there was no need to see a psychiatrist. He appeared to be sweating as he hustled me hastily out the door.

Authorities never have “issues with authority”