The Therapy Zone

Even as a child.....

“There is something inside your brain that is a puzzlement.”

     "When I was a child, I spake as a child, I understood as a child, I thought as a child: but when I became a man, I put away childish things."

                                                                         {Corinthians 1 verse 25}

    And it was as a child that I first discovered the Prisoner, at the tender age of 12 years in fact. But what it was that first drew me to the series, well that was probably Patrick McGoohan as Danger Man John Drake. But what made me remain with the series to the end, is not so clear, unless at that time it was simply that I wanted to learn whether or not the Prisoner-No.6 managed to escape in the end. Which of course he didn't, not even John Drake was that good!

   So, as we become adults, we are expected to put away childish things. But there is many childish things about the Prisoner, such as the use of nursery rhymes, in both speech and music "Pop goes the weasel" in Arrival, Once Upon A Time, and even No.8 in Checkmate is pompom Ming the same nursery rhyme as she makes No.6 a cup of hot chocolate as his night-cap. And there are actual children in a nursery to who No.6 is telling, amongst others, his blessed fairy tale of The Girl Who Was Death.

   To my way of thinking, the Prisoner was and is, far more understandable through the eyes of a child, than it is as a grown-up. Patrick McGoohan didn't put away such childish things with the Prisoner, so perhaps its best we don't either. Then we'll all understand what was in Patrick McGoohan's mind at the time - won't we?

   Anyone for a game of marbles round the back of the school bike shed?

 Is Number Six Mad - Or Is It A Dream?

    "Not according to our records"

                            {Head of the Department of Psychiatry}

    If it is all in the mind of the Prisoner, the village and all it's residents, then No.6 is mad. Or perhaps it's all a dream, and if it is, what if No.6 should awaken from his dream. What then the village and all it's residents then, both prisoners and warders alike? Will they not all be gone the moment No.6 awakens, perhaps only to return the moment he falls asleep again.

   But then there is the possibility that No.6 should actually awaken in the village himself, become part of his own dream from which he may not awaken, and find no escape!

BCNU.