Quote of the Day (Boyle)

“It costs a lot of money to be rich.”-- Peter Boyle, quoted in Lewis Lapham, “Estate Sale,” Harper’s Magazine, May 2008

(I thought of Boyle’s comment when I read Monday’s New York Times article, “Challenges of $600-a-Session Patients.” It seems that today’s rich not only have more than enough money to know what to do with, but that, in contrast to the depressed rich of the past—often children neglected by their high-living parents—today’s rich have made the money themselves and, as someone quoted in the article says, “are so often narcissistic in a way that excludes depression.” Even those $600 sessions with shrinks are an example of this narcissism, with one entertainment industry honcho flying out to the Hamptons, for instance, unable to make one at a particular time, offering to send a car out to whisk said psychiatrist out there with him to do therapy on the helicopter, then be sent home in the morning.

You wonder if any of these hedgefund-happy campers realize their wastefulness, their carelessness, and overall uselessness. And you wonder if the psychiatrists who enable them ever ask themselves how parasitical they are to cater to such patients’ whims.)