I Dont Even Like Zucchini

Ok, so let's start with the one issue the narrative acknowledges: Rung lost his license, due to, as the comic puts it "Inappropriate patient/practitioner relationships exemplified by a lack of professional distance and excessive self-disclosure", despite this, Rung kept on practicing for years.

Why is this a bad thing? Therapists are not your friends; therapist cannot be your friends. Not because they don't care about you, but because this relationship is asymmetrical and demands distance. I could do a whole post on it, but basically you don't owe to your therapist the same reciprocity you owe to your friends, this space is for you, they shouldn't take it to talk about themselves, you shouldn't worry about what they think of you. On the other hand, dealing with other people's problems all the time in mentally taxing and therapists need to learn to leave all of that in the office for their own mental health. You can't do this if your relationship with your clients is personal. On top of that, while objectivity is impossible, a therapist still needs to try to be aware of their own biases and mitigate anything that could interfere with their professional judgement. Similarly, the less you know about your therapist the better, of course they can tell you things about themselves to create rapport and a comfortable environment, but patients can also project in you things that interfere with therapy and you never know what that may be.

Could go into more detail if someone asks, but the point is that while therapists are friendly, they are NOT friends. These rules are there for a reason. So when truth comes to light, Megatron still tells Rung that he should still practice, which is very annoying because it makes it sound like besides this little mistake, Rung is still a great therapist. Which he's not. And is not just any mistake, particularly because Rung kept on being friends with his patients, because apparently he learned nothing. But at least Rung shoots Megatron's offer down.

But he really learned nothing, since he says he still thinks the tribunal was wrong. Very arrogant to think yourself above the rules like that.

Now, let's look at this snipped from Signal to Noise, the prose story that accompanies Mtmte #13 (when they go to Hedonia).

Whirl was banging his head against the wall, Rewind inquiries about this, not only does Rung tell him he does that to relieve pressure in the section of his brain Whirl thinks is the cause of his impulsive behavior, he then says is better to leave him to it if that's what he wants to think. So he's not only violating patient confidentiality here, he's apparently just.... enabling Whirl's self-harm. Like, what the actual fuck. This is so weird. Why is he letting his self-destructive patient commit self-harm?? Why is he letting Whirl believe some non-existent brain damage is the cause of his unpredictable behavior, when Whirl already thinks of himself as broken, instead of looking for ways so that Whirl can learn to self-regulate. If Whirl requires stimuli, why is he not providing safer options? This is all so wrong.

Also, the way he talks here comes across as condescending, which is not a big deal on its own, but is present a lot through Rung's dialogue and rubs me the wrong way. Condescension is, sadly, something many mental health practitioners can fall into and they should monitor themselves to make sure that isn't the case. Another example of him being this way is this excerpt from Bullets (the prose story that accompanies Last Stand of the Wreckers).

This point is more nitpicky, I’ll admit, but I really, really don’t like the way he talks about his patients. If I had ever referred to any of the people I worked with while getting my degree as something like “poor thing”, I would have been chastised by my supervisors.

We'll come back to Whirl, but for now let's look at Megatron's session:

Now, apparently Rung has spent most of the session trying to push his theories on the Deeper Meaning of the fusion canon onto Megatron. This is bad. First of all, whenever you have a hypothesis you present it as a suggestion, not a fact, if the patient rejects it you can try to bring it up again, delicately, if they reject it again you drop it. You can try other paths later if you're still convinced, but also you should trust your patients and not assume that you know them better than themselves. Rung just telling Megatron what his actions mean is counterproductive to their rapport and progress. Not to mention that if Megatron has been so closed off, then he doesn't even have a good basis to interpret what the fusion canon would mean to him in the first place. Even the most conservative of psychoanalysts agree that symbolic meaning is specific to the subject.

And yes, a closed off patient can be very frustrating, but theraphy is like 70% wording and I don't like how Rung says "It would help if you weren't so evasive", like he's blaming Megatron. Especially considering that this is the first session, and this is a guy who hasn't been emotionally vulnerable in 4 million years. You should be focusing in creating rapport, explaining your methodology, getting your patients trusts, not pushing your theories. You're not gonna make any breakthroughts in a first session. Is your job to be patient.

Anyway, here Rung senses Megatron won't come back for another session (who can't blame him) and asks him to forgive him to take the opportunity to ask him who is Terminus.... so he's basically admitting he's asking this to satisfy his own curiosity, instead of trying to help Megatron, giving him something to reflect on or persuade him to come to another session. This is what he chooses to finish on. Not only is this no way to end a session, but I don't care if Megatron won't come back, every single second of you two in that office is all about your patient, not about what you want.

Now let's look at the whole Fortress Maximus takes Rung and Whirl Hostage incident. First, Fort Max says he "apparently is having an acute psychotic episode", most likely quoting Rung. Now, a psychotic episode means experiencing delirium or hallucinations, this is not at all what was happening to Fort Max. There's nothing to indicate his perception of reality is compromised. I have no idea why JRo couldn't just google the term, but there's already enough stigma that equates psychosis with violence. Honestly, this mistake is so dumb I'm not even attributing it to Rung, it just really bothers me. Someone please edit the errors section for this chapter's wiki page to include this.

For the way Rung handled the crisis, overall is not like he does something wrong more like that he doesn't much something right. There are steps you take and techniques Rung does do things like identify the problem and offer validation to Fort Max's emotions, but at the same time he doesn't seem to know what he's doing. What really bothers me about the whole thing is how he treats Whirl.

So he insults Whirl twice, first subtly by trying to tell Fort Max he's giving Whirl too much credit, which is not the nicest way to word is not like Whirl to play mindgames in combat. And then he flat out tells him what's wrong with you. And remember, Whirl is very much trying to goad Fort Max into killing him. Whirl has a death wish. He's on a crisis of his own and comments like that are just gonna feed into his belief he's messed up beyond repair and certainly won't convince him to care about his life.

Again, I don’t like the accusatory tone in which he says this, and this isn’t exactly the time for it. Also, looks like someone forgot to establish professional boundaries, don’t look so happy. He did maintain patient confidentiality at gunpoint, so there’s that and then disregarded it later

It's true that this is a very stressful situation and Rung was under treath of death, so he can be forgiven some mistakes and snapping ta Whirl, but someone who deals with crisis intervention will get treathened multiple times and that's something you have to be ready for. Rung has been at this for millions of years and while he may not specialize in crisis intervention, that's still a basic skill he should have as a mental health professional. He deals with people traumatized by war. If he doesn't have the skills tho deal with these patients, he should not take them.

And speaking of poor crisis intervention let's look at the example that really drives me up the wall.

You know what's the first rule of crisis intervention?? What you should absolutely never do when there's a potential threat/murder/suicide? You don't challenge the subject. You never ever tell someone to do it. Neither do you tell them that they won't dare to do it. Which is exactly what Rung does here. He tells Brainstorm to pull the trigger and then says that of course he hasn't pulled it.

You see, Rung knew Brainstorm wouldn't do it because he had been standing there for 10 minutes and Rung is a pretty good judge of character and that doesn't matter because I can't stress how much you do not do any of that. That kind of thing can very much be an incentive. You do not gamble like this in a crisis. Anyone who has spent 1 hour at a crisis intervention workshop would know better than this.

I'm told in the script commentary for this issue, JRo says he knew Rung shouldn't have said this, but he needed him to... which is just..... there were several other characters in that scene that scene. Any of them coud have said it instead of the one person who absolutely should have known better. This is the kind of risk Rodimus may take, maybe, even the issue says they would expect something like that from Whirl, maybe just Chromedome wanted to believe in his friend. Really, why did it have to be Rung? Unless you wanted to use this characterize him, but the character that comes across is of someone so arrogant he's willing to disregard basic rules in his practice, which doesn't look good with everything else.

Lastly, when Rung shows up to stop Megatron's personality adjustment, is not because he thinks PAs are wrong, he approves of them as a last resort. He's just there so he can verify this case requires it, which is good that he does, but still... this implies that Rung at some point approved personality adjustments...