In Which Dr Welsh Rashly Explains the Barford Syndrome and Director Houghton Makes an Offer and an Admission

Dealer Dave offers the latest diagnosis of this blog. 

My wife holds a doctorate in psychology, and she has explained to me that such behavior reveals a personality disorder characterized by narcissism and unrealistic, irrational fantasizing. 

Apparently, Dr Welsh is indeed in this with Dealer Dave. From half-way across the world, without even meeting me the US psychologist has come up with a not-very-professional diagnosis. She considers what I write here to be "irrational fantasising" (rather like the wild stories her own husband makes up about other people). I'd say her diagnostic skills would be better placed looking at the man who lives in the same tree-shadowed cul-de-sac bungalow with her, whose writings reveal dark fantasies about stringing up Department of State authorities "from the lamp-posts of Constitution Avenue" and all-too-frequent reference to Nazi-related imagery. I would say she need not look so far as to far-off Poland for a prime example of an individual with "a personality disorder characterized by narcissism and unrealistic, irrational fantasizing".

[see also a discussion of ACCG amateur psychologist's diagnosis from March 2012: Preservationists with "Personality Disorders"].

The Tompa blog Sock-puppet-Houghton suggests that here in Europe, as in the US, we need to pay for basic healthcare. Inferring from Dr Susan's remote diagnosis of my alleged condition: 

If I understand correctly, Paul Barford may have a clinical disorder, and should seek treatment as soon as possible,

he patronisingly offers some help with setting up an ACCG "Barford Therapy Fund". He claims he can afford this condescending gesture because " I have some money saved up from the sale of one or two antiquities I made some years ago". I would suggest Mr Houghton's money, wherever it comes from, would do more good spent in the USA where there are people who cannot afford proper health care which the state inexplicably does not supply (too busy spending the money on political assassination drones no doubt). I suggest Mr Houghton contacts ACCG's new friend Dick Stout, as he is trying to raise such money for one of his new friends whose son's need is certainly much greater than mine and she has shown herself to be a friend of the collectors' cause.

It is interesting to note that the director of the American Cultural Property Research Institute apparently admits to being involved in dealing in antiquities. Surely a clash of interests there? What next, the director of a leading US medical research centre getting involved in trafficking human organs?