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Seattle Post-Intelligencer: Funky Winkerbean

I haven’t read Funky Winkerbean in forever and ever. It seems to me it used to be about… Funky Winkerbean. But the folks over at Comic Curmudgeon have been calling it Funky Cancerbean, and other silly names, and thereafter I sometimes tuned in, only to find one of the characters died of cancer after long and dramatic suffering, and now day after day the husband of Lisa the cancer victim has been laying on a couch talking through his reaction in flashback.

The funny thing about this is, the only people who use the couch in therapy are traditional psychoanalysts, which are horribly expensive and not covered by insurance, and are a dying breed. You might find them on the east coast, and I have heard of one in L.A. over here on the west coast, but you don’t just find them everywhere in the country. Also, in a few strips the analyst is sitting alongside the couch, and traditionally he would be sitting out of the client’s line of sight. ALSO – psychoanalysis done traditionally takes years. You don’t just go until you’re done. The goals are different. A grief group, I could buy into, but the couch thing? not so much.

The public view of therapy is a skewed and incorrect one. This is one of those things that only perpetuates the notion that psychotherapy involves couches and shrinks with a pen and paper to take down what you’re saying.

Yes, this is therapy geekiness – but I’m a big geek. What do you expect?