A con game functions through exciting greed, the political-social con through assuaging fear. All fortune-tellers know that the mark doesn’t walk into the parlor save for questions of money, illness, or love. Psychiatrists (many actually good-willed, and some few actually wise) collude with the patient, holding out hope not of revealing a cure, but of identifying a cause.* This allows a perpetual elongation of the supposed treatment, which is handy for the patient, who is largely engaged in the same fantasy as the Victorian valetudinarian, running from one physician to another to cure elusive
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