ABSTRACT
People don't always want you to do what they ask you to do. I conclude this section and this book with a cautionary tale from my days in the hills of East Kentucky. It portrays in a dramatic way a situation which occurs in more subtle fashion in therapists' offices when we wander naievely in to pre-existing, powerful "family systems." For this reason, though it is a medical doctor's misadventure, I include it in my collection of essays on psychotherapy.
"Macie" was my first published psychiatric piece, written in 1985, it appeared in the 1988 anthology Psychiatric House Calls, edited by John Talbott (American Psychiatric Press).
