Book excerpt: FINALIST FOR THE ETHEL WILSON FICTION PRIZE FINALIST FOR THE VICTORIA BUTLER BOOK PRIZE “C.P. Boyko's second offering is brilliantly bold. Playful and dire and scholarly all at once, Psychology may well be the most audaciously original collection of Canadian fiction, ever. Mr. Mustard alone is worth the price of admission.”—Bill Gaston, author of Mount Appetite “Very revealing.”—Hubert T. Ross, PhD, PsyD, DPsy Psychologists are people we admire and resent. At best, they’re compassionate detectives of the human soul, healers and diagnosticians, assessing the internal machinations that structure our lives and behavior. At worst, however, they’re smug, hyper-educated, bombastic, yappy, socially deaf, thrice-divorced and twice-separated spouse-swapping cat-torturing perverts. Plus, they’re all in this book. And so are their patients. C.P. Boyko’s Psychology and Other Stories is replete with analysts, attorneys, criminals, Freudians, wardens, and self-help gurus. From Dr. Pringle’s treatment-resisting young patient in “Reaction-Formation” to the philandering forensic psychiatrist of “The Blood-Brain Barrier,” Psychology is a droll dissection of industry archetypes—as well as a brilliant study of mental illness, mental health, and the people who try to tell them apart.