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	Helena's old boy with the toy donkey & the ghetto blaster 
	sounds to me more like a schizophrenic than a deaf mute.  
	All the same, he presents a droll & refreshingly anarchic figure 
	cocking a snook at the established powers.  We laugh approvingly 
	& identify with his small defiance.

	At the same time, I suspect the chap himself suffers greatly - 
	probably locked in the peculiar isolation of the psychotic. 
	One of the nasty charms of working in psychiatry is the undeniable 
	funniness of many of the patients.  For forty years I've laughed 
	at the crazy ideas & the Joycean word plays of my own patients. 
	And, incongruously, many of them have laughed along with me. 
	Yet there's no denying they would give anything be other than 
	the way they are.  

	Is it possible to reconcile the sick awfulness of mental illness 
	with the fact that it has irresistibly comic aspects ?

	Scottie B.

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