In Competition No. 3297, you were invited to provide a psychiatrist’s report on a well-known literary character.
The germ of this challenge was an interview with Olivia Colman, who played Miss Havisham in a recent adaptation of Great Expectations, in which the actress said of her character: ‘It’s terrible what happens to Miss Havisham… If only she’d had a therapist or a really good friend to chat to, she might be in a much better place.’ Only John O’Byrne chose to put ‘Ms H’ on the psychiatrist’s couch, though. Far more popular subjects were Bertie Wooster, Holden Caulfield and – star of the show – Winnie-the-Pooh.
David Silverman, Martin Williams, Joe Houlihan, Charlotte Marshall, Joshua Price and Nigel Johnson-Hill earn honourable mentions. The winners, printed below, are rewarded with £30 each.
Like Freud’s cause célèbre R, who believed a rat had penetrated his anus, civil servant G suffers the paranoid delusion of a mole working in the circus.
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