At his recruitment as senior physician, Gert Postel gave as the subject of his doctoral thesis "Cognitively induced distortion established in stereotypical judgement". "This is a string of empty concepts." The chairman replied: "That's quite interesting; you will certainly feel at home here with us." There were 39 candidates, all specialists in psychiatry and neurology and two of them were habilitated but Gert Postel, the postman, got the job.
"Psychiatry is a trade that thrives on word acrobatics".
"With the psychiatric language you can justify any diagnosis and also the opposite and the opposite of the opposite - the imagination sets no limits."
"Those who master the psychiatric language can limitlessly formulate any nonsense and put it in the guise of the academic".
"To subsume certain symptoms under certain terms can be done by any trained goat."
Or:
"Any trained goat can become a psychiatrist."