Sidewalk Psychiatry

IN THE XMAS SPIRIT, COUNSELING 5-c-, advertises a sign on a booth outside the Southern California Counseling Center in Los Angeles. Below it is a second inscription: "The psychiatrist is in." He really is: psychiatrist Benjamin Weininger is dispensing advice from the booth at a nickel per patient.

Weininger has taken up his station "to dramatize the importance of low-cost mental health service," explains Vicki Michel, director of the center. "We handle 500 cases a week and we get no public funding."

Since the booth was set up last month, Weininger has been seeing two dozen patients a day. "I've been listening to everything from broken love affairs to conflicts with parents," he told a Los Angeles Times reporter. "Some people are surprised that they can see their problems in a new light so quickly." Among his patients was a bearded youth who had "a problem communicating with people," especially at parties. "Maybe you're trying too hard," Weininger counseled. "The idea is just to be with people." Another man was contemplating suicide because his wife had left him. Weininger discovered that his patient felt humiliated and had told no one about being deserted. "I told him it was the secret that was killing him, not the loss of his wife." By not informing others, Weininger explained, he was depriving himself of their support. "I planted a seed in his mind and opened it to other possibilities. He thanked me, paid a nickel and walked away."

Fans of Cartoonist Charles Schulz will recognize that the center's publicity gimmick is a direct steal from the comic strip Peanuts, in which Good Ol' Charlie Brown's mean, cranky friend Lucy deals out her own brand of caustic counseling from a "lemonade" booth. But Psychiatrist Weininger apparently knows his Freud better than he knows his Schulz; at this time of year, Lucy's fee is not a nickel. Every October, because it is less comfortable to man an open booth in cold weather, she raises her price to seven cents.

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