shrink

[Laurence Horn]

At 6:06 AM -0700 3/25/09, James A. Landau <JJJRLandau at netscape.com> wrote:
>On Tue, 24 Mar 2009 14:49:36 Zulu minus 0400 Charles Doyle
><cdoyle at UGA.EDU> wrote:
>
><quote>
>This past weekend I saw the movie "Revolutionary Road," which is almost
>too depressing to discuss!
>
>It gave what appeared to be a pretty realistic, accurate depiction of
>life in the mid-1950s (sometimes on the edge of caricature,
>perhaps--that sea of men's hats!) .  The one false note that I detected
>was the seemingly anachronistic use of the term "shrink" for
>'psychiatrist'.
>
>The OED gives 1966 for its earliest example ("headshinker" is earlier).
>Searching the phrases "his shrink," "my shrink," and "your shrink" in
>Google Books yields two instances from 1963:  Nelson Algren, _Nelson
>Algren's Own Book of Lonesome Monsters_, p. 22; and Leslie Fiedler's
>_The Second Stone_, p. 184.
>
>Shouldn't all Hollywood producers be required to hire language checkers?
>Doesn't our union have such a provision in its contract with the
>studios?
></quote>
>
>>>From 1956 to 1960 my best friend's father was a psychiatric
>>resident.  I distinctly remember my father and the resident
>>discussing the usage of "headshrinker" and "shrink" as slang terms
>>for psychiatrists.  This had to be before mid-1960 when the doctor
>>finished his residency and moved to Nashville.
>
>Our union's contract is, unfortunately, overridden by the Producer's
>Union, whose rules absolutely forbid the use of fact-checking of
>movie and TV scripts.  The Producer's Union's position is "it is
>better to agree with popular perception in the Los Angeles area than
>to be factually correct."  Or, as the old proverb has it, "never
>spoil a good story with facts."

Not always.  I remember someone working for Adrian Lyne, the director
of the 1997 remake of "Lolita" (starring Jeremy Irons), contacting me
or us (if it was me, I posted something to the list on it) about
certain locutions he wanted to include in the film only if we could
confirm that they wouldn't have been anachronistic in the timeframe
(late 1940s?) of the story.   I confess I've never actually seen that
remake; it's one of those books that I fear is untranslatable into
another medium (or language).

LH

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