Good Advice

national | worker & community struggles and protests | opinion/analysis Saturday May 28, 2005 09:57 by Sean Crudden - impero sean at impero dot iol dot ie Jenkinstown, Dundalk, Co Louth. 042 93 71310

What is the Real Agenda in a Professional Career?

In what way does the personal agenda of each member of the professions affect the course and shape and quality of the lives of their clients? Perhaps it does not matter what motivates the professional or what way s/he thinks?

My father Ned was a psychiatric nurse who worked in The Mental Hospital in Ardee. One time in the late 50’s or early 60’s he was talking about my younger brother Jimmy who was finishing school around that time to the RMS in the hospital, Dr J. J. Wilson. "Tell him to go into psychiatry - it’s a great racket!" Wilson said.

My father who died in 1982 was enthusiastic about the advice and related it to the family many times. My brother Jimmy is now retired after completing his career in the police and is still involved in security tasks around Newbridge where he has lived for most of his life.

Dr Wilson and his wife who was also a psychiatrist are both dead. Dr J. J. Wilson died in 2002 around the same time as my mother and he was able to buy a farm in Kildare and property in Dublin from the proceeds of the "racket" he and his wife were involved in during their professional careers.

Possibly Wilson is involved in another racket in the sky these days - running a huxter’s shop or a shebeen maybe and perhaps my father is going around in the same place innocently and gullibly lapping up misleading advice.

I worked as a vocational teacher from the mid 60’s to the mid 70’s and I never felt as comfortable or as self-satisfied as Dr Wilson obviously did. Perhaps if I had approached the problem in a different way I could have turned it into a racket - a nice little money spinner.

Psychiatry, medicine, the law and even teaching have descended shamelessly and barefacedly in our time to the level of a racket. There is even more cynicism abroad now than there was in the days of Dr Wilson. At least he was enthusiastic about the prospect of making money. The rackets today are flat and stale and profit no-one.