On Tuesday, May 9, 2023 at 5:17:52 PM UTC-5, Peter Wezeman wrote:

On Monday, May 8, 2023 at 9:21:45 AM UTC-5, James Nicoll wrote:

Five SFF Characters Who Could Have Greatly Benefited From Therapy

Before building a moon base, becoming a government assassin, or dressing like Bat to punch murder clowns, consider a more reasonable alternative.

Sometimes characters did benefit from therapy. The following is from
_Secomd Stage Lensmen_, courtesy of the Gutenberg Project. Kimball
Kinnison has just captured Illona of Lonabar, an agent of Boskone who
was held prisoner by the Lyranians.

"I am starved," the girl said, simply. "I couldn't eat there. I knew they were
going to kill me, and it... it sort of took away my appetite."

"Well, what are we waiting for? I'm hungry, too--let's go eat."

"Not with you, either, any more than with them. I thanked you, Lensman,
for saving my life there, and I meant it. I thought then and still think that
I would rather have you kill me than those horrible, monstrous women,
but I simply can't eat."

"But I'm not even thinking of killing you--can't you get that through your skull?
I don't make war on women; you ought to know that by this time."

"You will have to." The girl's voice was low and level. "You didn't kill any of those
Lyranians, no, but you didn't chase them a million parsecs, either. We have been
taught ever since we were born that you Patrolmen always torture people to death.
I don't quite believe that of you personally, since I have had a couple of glimpses
into your mind, but you'll kill me before I'll talk. At least, I hope and I believe that
I can hold out."

"Listen, girl." Kinnison was in deadly earnest. "You are in no danger whatever.
You are just as safe as though you were in Klono's hip pocket. You have some information that I want, yes, and I will get it, but in the process I will neither
hurt you nor do you mental or physical harm. The only torture you will undergo
will be that which, as now, you give yourself."

"But you called me a... a zwilnik, and they always kill them," she protested.

"Not always. In battles and in raids, yes. Captured ones are tried in court. If found
guilty, they used to go into the lethal chambers. Sometimes they do yet, but not
usually. We have mental therapists now who can operate on a mind if there's anything there worth saving."

Actually, it's a bit darker than KK implies.

For ex, earlier in the story, KK captures another female Boskonian agent, Dessa DesPlaines (somehow I suspect that name is an alias) who takes a mind-erasing drug to keep any Lensmen from reading her mind. (It's not clear if she _knows_ that's what the
drug does.)

OK, KK proceeds to 'cure' her by writing a whole set of fake memories and life experiences into her mind-wiped self, leaving her as a law-abiding citizen. This is portrayed as admirable, an example of KK's chivalrous reluctance to terminate a woman.

Of course he more or less _did_ kill Dessa DesPlaines, by replacing her with someone else. Even when I first read that, as a teenager, it struck me that it would have been cleaner to shoot her.

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