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most plausible model of an individual’s psyche we have to date.
    This, however, is a spurious discussion. The truth is that many psychiatrists know next to nothing about Freud’s theories; everything is all about the brain these days, as in neurons and synapses and chemical imbalances. Nerve activity. Mental illness really is mental illness, not the fault or fancy of an individual (a wonderful thing for all those who’ve ever been accused of “malingering”). But humans are not simply conglomerations of their hardware. It might be easier if we were, if the mind could be quantified in some physiological computation. And that’s what first caught my attention with regard to Nigel Pathmana-than – excuse me, Doctor Nigel Pathmanathan. From his point of view, life could be perfectly abstracted into an equation. Children were like little machines. If you had a manual and followed the steps, you could fix them.

TWELVE
    I t should be said that I liked the good psychiatrist who was part of the team I was assigned to. Doctor Nigel Pathmanathan was a gentle person. His demeanour meant he was approachable. It was after these first impressions, though, that I began to understand a little of what was going on for him professionally, which I tried, unquestioningly at first, to take at face value.
    The doctor dieted on kinesiology. This crossing of the brain’s hemispheres through activity was the way, according to him, to fix all ills from severe intellectual disability to cerebral palsy, not to mention everything in between. He defended the hours it took to complete the complicated exercise regimes – hours out of a child’s day – and persisted drawing complex diagrams for mothers so they could instruct their children in the art – and it was a kind of art – of performing the routine. Don’t get me wrong: it’s a lovely idea. But this neatly dressed Sri Lankan-born man – unusually tall with a round face and large green eyes and long lashes – was kidding himself. There had been no trials and little clinical opinion to back up his extraordinary claims – a consideration he didn’t seem concerned about. Doctor Nigel Pathmanathan was writing a book about his theories, incomprehensible excerpts of which he willingly handed out for us to read. They made little sense and overlooked many practicalities.
    He talked about being offered a publishing deal. Collectively – there were about twelve people in our team – our blank faces said: You can’t be serious! and, our second thought, The publishers can’t be serious!
    Still, in what became a kind of ritualised response, we’d smile and say it sounded good.
    Added to this, Nigel wrote notes that he regularly delivered into our pigeonholes. He had a habit of putting a smiley face – a circle with dots for eyes and a curve for a mouth – on everything. My immediate reaction to this was that twelve-year-old girls had done it en masse for a couple of years in the early nineties – a fad a whole generation grew out of quickly. The smiley face, however, adorned the page regardless of whether it was a paper discussing the count of Rapid Eye Movement a child suffering night terrors has, or a yellow sticker slapped on the flyer advertising a church meeting.
    And there, since I’ve alluded to it I might as well let another detail fall upon the page: Nigel Pathm-anathan was a born-again Christian – a fundamentalist, in fact.
    In the church Nigel was a member of, recruiting others into the fold wasn’t just encouraged, it was expected. He was required to try to transform those who were tainted – by definition, heathens. His church ignored "disinterest" in Christianity, preferring to call it "waiting". According to Nigel, every disbeliever was waiting in a line outside God’s door, and all it took was for their number to be called and BINGO, they’d want to proceed inside.