The psychiatrist

Abstract

This short story concerns a court-appointed psychiatrist who must evaluate the sanity of a young woman who killed her eight-month-old daughter. The woman tells of her pain and helplessness at being unable to comfort her infant daughter, who speaks of her own mortality with terrible dread! The story attempts to convey something of the experience of the professional working on the borderline of the real and the unreal, the possible and the impossible, tragedy and absurdity and having to make decisions that have major life consequences.