Michael Holden's All ears

I became surrounded on a bus by three ladies whose lunch had evidently escalated into something more sustained, causing them to abandon their cars for public transport. Woman 1 (the most drunk) "Where does this bus go?" Woman 2 (not drunk) "I'll tell you where to get off." Woman 1 "When do you qualify as a psycho-whatever-it-is?" Woman 2 "Psychotherapist. I've only just started. This is my first term." Woman 3 (medium drunk) "Where are you doing it?" Woman 2 " In town. The youngest person there is 21, it's quite daunting." Woman 1 (slurring over the distinctions) "But what's the difference between a psychiatrist and a psychotherapist." Woman 2 "A psychiatrist has more of a clinical background." Woman 1 (delighted to have grasped that) "Right!" Woman 2 "With therapy that's not always the case." Woman 3 (not helping) "So at the end of the day, you'll be doing like, cognitive?" Woman 2 "That might end up being part of it. Freud is the real distinction; he had been a medical doctor, so the psychiatrists …" Woman 1 (interrupting) "So you can give out drugs, or is that the other lot?" Woman 2 "Well, it's more psychiatry, the idea that the problem has a pathology to it. Therapy is different, to a degree in that …" Woman 1 (not listening) "Well Edmund sees someone, and he's on drugs. And Peter sees someone, and he isn't on anything." Woman 2 (bracing herself for a long journey, in every sense) "I see."