Thousands Of Shrinks Come To Wellfleet Every Year?

BostonGlobe.com – It’s summer on the Outer Cape, and that means the shrinks have once again returned. Each year, between Memorial Day and Labor Day, thousands of psychiatrists, psychologists, and other species of mental health professional bypass the bustle of the Mid-Cape to get to the comparative quiet of Wellfleet and its surrounding towns. It’s a natural phenomenon as reliable as the swells rising off Coast Guard Beach.

The therapists come here for various reasons, but a big one is that so many people in their line of work have come here before — going back three generations. The group I’ve joined on this day in late June evokes the summer excursions that Sigmund Freud himself took to Bavaria and the Swiss Alps a century ago, vacationing with his eager psychoanalyst students, who in turn were trailed by some of their patients.

Who knew? Talk about an untapped resource! Thousands of mental health professionals just happen to visit a place where we have an inordinate amount of lunatics? Hey shrinks, maybe instead of chilling on the beach you could do some investigating into what part of the brain makes a tourist incapable of using  a rotary? Or maybe you could give some electroshock therapy to people who light off fireworks during the day? Or how about trying to figure out why people in Hyannis put $10,000 rims on $2,000 Honda Civics? The possibilities are legitimately endless. Shit, they could spend years on Insane Tony alone.

P.S. Psychiatrists flying and driving to Wellfleet is NOT a “natural phenomenon”, it’s a decision manipulated by thought. A lunar eclipse is a natural phenomenon.