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don’t know,” replied the psychiatrist, hesitating.
    “Well, you’re right. I
am
frail. I’ve learned that no one is worthy of being called an expert, including a scientist, especially if he doesn’t recognize his own limits, his own frailties. Are you frail?” he shot back. “Well?”
    Seeing the psychiatrist hesitate, the dreamseller asked, “Which discipline of psychotherapy do you subscribe to?”
    That question came as a surprise. I didn’t understand wherethe dreamseller was going with this. But the psychiatrist, who was also a psychotherapist, said proudly, “I’m a Freudian.”
    “Very well. Then answer me this: Which is more complex, a psychological theory, whatever it is, or the mind of a human being?”
    The psychiatrist, fearing a trap, didn’t answer for a moment. Then he replied indirectly. “We use theories to decipher the human mind.”
    “Fine. Then allow me one more question: You can map out a theory and read every last text on the subject. But can you exhaust the understanding of the human mind?”
    “No. But I’m not here to be questioned by you,” he said dismissively, not realizing what the dreamseller was driving at. “Besides, I’m an expert in the human mind.”
    The dreamseller took that opening:
    “Mental health professionals are poets of existence, they have a grand mission. However, they can’t put a patient into a theoretical text, yet try desperately to put a theoretical text inside of a person. Don’t trap your patients between the walls of a theory, or you’ll reduce their abilities to grow. Each sickness is unique to the one who’s sick. Every sick person has a mind. And every mind is an infinite universe.”
    I understood what he was telling the psychiatrist, for I felt in my own skin what he meant. When the psychiatrist approached me, he used techniques and interpretations that I immediately rejected. He dealt with the act of suicide, but not with the ravaged human being inside me. His theory might be useful in predictable situations, especially when the patient seeks help, but not in situations where the patient rejects help or has lost hope. I was resistant. First, I needed to be touched by the psychiatrist the man. And later, by the psychiatrist the professional. Because he had approached me as an illness, and not as a person, I perceived him as an invader and withdrew.
    The dreamseller took the opposite approach. He started with the sandwich; he asked me deep questions to know more about who I was, like nourishment that reached down into my bones. Only then did he deal with the act of suicide.
    The psychiatrist, though he had been called a poet of existence, didn’t like being called out by some shabbily dressed stranger with no credentials. He didn’t seem happy at all that I no longer wanted to commit suicide. Damn his envy! I wanted to make him see that he was missing the bigger picture. But then again, I’d done the same thing inside the sacred temple of my classroom.
    Then, the dreamseller placed a hand on the shoulder of the young fire chief and told him, “Thank you, son, for the risks you have taken to save people you don’t know. You
are
a dreamseller.”
    The dreamseller turned and headed toward the elevator, and I followed him. The psychiatrist turned to the police chief to speak just as the dreamseller turned around to say something himself, and, amazingly, they said the same thing:
    “Crazy people understand each other.”
    The psychiatrist turned red. He must have asked himself, as I did, “How could they have been thinking the same thing?”
    The dreamseller saw there was time for one final and unforgettable lesson at the top of that building. He told the psychiatrist, “Some people’s craziness is obvious. For others, it’s hidden. Which type is yours?”
    “Not me, I’m normal!” the psychiatrist snapped.
    “Well, mine is visible,” the dreamseller said.
    He then turned his back and began to walk, his hands on my shoulders. After