"the pinball machine of your life"

"Stern slid open a desk drawer and took out a blackened pipe.  He smelled it, turned it over while looking at me.  'Psychiatry attacks the onion of the self, removing layer after layer until it gets down to the little sliver of unsullied ego.  Or: psychiatry drills like an oil well, down and sidewise and down again, through all the muck and rock until it strikes a layer that yields. Or: psychiatry grabs a handful of sexual motivations and throws them on the pinball machine of your life, so they bounce on down against the episodes.  Want more?'

I had to laugh.  'That last one was pretty good.'

'That last one was pretty bad.  They are all bad.  They all try to simplify something which is complex by its very nature.  The only thumbnail you'll get from me is this: no one knows what's really wrong with you but you; no one can find a cure for it but you; no one but you can identify it as a cure; and once you find it, no one but you can do anything about it.'

'What are you here for?'

'To listen.'"

-- Theodore Sturgeon, More Than Human