YOU AREN'T A HYPOCHONDRIAC IF YOU'RE GENUINELY TERMINAL:

The state France is in: paranoid, schizophrenic, hypochondriac (John Lichfield, 07 December 2006, Independent)

France's "national psychiatrist" has issued an alarming report on the democratic and social health of the nation as it prepares to select a new president next year. Gérard Mermet, a sociologist who publishes a much respected bulletin on the country's state of mind every two years, suggests that France now suffers from a collective form of three mental illnesses: paranoia, schizophrenia and hypochondria. [...]

Apart from anything else, M. Mermet feels that the French, as a nation, should "get out more". Only one in 10 French people each year travels abroad - much less than other EU countries.

Ignorance of the rest of the world, he suggests, helps the French to insist, simultaneously, that their social model is excellent and that everything is going to the bad.

In truth, he says, France finds it difficult to distinguish between what works and what does not. The country's much vaunted social model often does the opposite of what it is supposed to do. Job protection creates unemployment; the "egalitarian" education system creates elites.

In other words, they underestimate how ill the French model has made them and how well the Anglo-American has worked.

Posted by Orrin Judd at December 7, 2006 8:46 AM