"I don't know who to trust, slick Obama or robotic Romney," the man complained. "Whenever I see Scott Brown or Elizabeth Warren, I think of my over-achieving brother and my bossy junior high principal."
If the psychiatrist is Dr. Melvyn Lurie, he might hand the patient his book, "Psyche Politics: How to Read the Political Mind" and tell him to relax.
The Weston psychiatrist said he based his study of why politicians "go negative" and spread "the big lie" on the formation of the human mind from genes and familial influences all the way to the campaign trail.
When it comes to "seeing through the snake oil" of politics, Lurie said "the best system is the one most in synch with human nature."
"I'm taking a biological approach to politics that explores how the human mind is formed and how it works," said Lurie. "It's designed to help the electorate see things more clearly about our political system and why they feel as they do about certain politicians."
An honors graduate at Johns Hopkins University where he captained the soccer and tennis teams, Lurie continued his studies at Harvard Medical School and spent 30 yea years teaching and developing a multidisciplinary private practice that includes treating professionals and the severely chronically ill.
When analyzing candidates' motives, Lurie said he examines their lives "from the bottom up, the inside out." Whether trying to figure out what drives Newt Gingrich or your mother-in-law, he maintains their personalities reflect the fusing of genetic inheritance and family dynamics to shape a personality, driven by mostly unrecognized unconscious drives.
Lurie's observations about several high profile candidates combine intriguing psychological insights and commonsense observations that result in occasionally provocative conclusions.
While never treating Gingrich, he suggested his sense of "grandiosity" might result from a bipolar disorder that can also fuel a relentless drive to achieve.
He regards Mitt Romney as a supremely talented "good little boy" driven to match the achievements of an "idealized" father. He suggests Romney has had difficulty winning the general electorate's trust because they perceive him as an approval-seeking "grown up little boy" with a cloying smile when they're looking for a strong parent figure to lead the country.
Before Herman Cain's flameout, Lurie said he'd initially earned voters' trust with his "I've been in your shoes" persona that helped them regard him as someone who understood their concerns. More importantly, Cain's "simple, direct and assured" demeanor struck voters as "parental," a quality they desperately seek in a candidate.
Yet Lurie said Cain's humor, likability and charisma had inadvertently turned him into "an entertainer" who'd "crossed the line from substance to sizzle" that would undermine his credibility.
And man-to-man, Lurie has some advice for U.S. Sen. Scott Brown about dealing with "aggressive" women who just happen to be his likely opponent, as Elizabeth Warren is.
Tit for tat might work in the schoolyard but in the gender sensitive realm of Bay State politics, he said bullies must beware how their tactics affect their public image.
Several weeks ago, Warren made a crack about Brown's modeling 30 years ago, saying "Well, at least I didn't take my clothes off to get through college." Like many males conditioned to "respond to aggression with aggression," Lurie said Brown's reply, "Thank God," angered women and some sensitive males.
Brown had ignored the old schoolyard lesson most men learned as boys: "You don't hit a girl, even if she hits you first. After all, she can't really hurt you."
In his blog, Lurie observed Bay State "Democrats, with unconscious female identities and values, find aggression distasteful." He said Brown would have scored politically by turning the sensitivity tables on Warren, questioning the propriety of her aggressive comment by saying "You wouldn't like it if someone tried to make an aggressive, unflattering comment about you, would you."
Lurie isn't the only one viewing politics through the lens of psychology.
For more than 30 years, Prof. Michael Milburn has been researching political psychology focusing on, among other things, the role of emotion in public opinion.
A professor of psychology at UMass-Boston, the Newton resident directed groundbreaking research that "demonstrated a relationship between experiences of harsh childhood punishment and adult support for punitive public policies" like capital punishment and use of military force.
The author of "The Politics of Denial," Milburn said a study he directed "used Freudian models" to determine how people who'd been raised by parents who "demanded obedience to authority" retained higher levels of anger they would displace onto other groups of people.
"People who've been abused tend to displace their personal issues onto other people or causes in a publicly acceptable way," he said.
Another study determined political advertisements that included emotionally charged language and images were less effective when viewers had been forewarned about their message, a reaction he described as "psychological inoculation."
If people get to review questionable information early, its persuasiveness is lowered," said Milburn.
While organizations like Ad Watch had been effective in challenging and publicizing manipulative political advertisements, Milburn said new laws allowing large donations to Super PACs had resulted in a proliferation of manipulative messages too numerous to review.
While growing up at a time the press ignored President John F. Kennedy's infidelities, Milburn said he'd never seen any studies that suggested an elected official's competence is compromised by philandering.
"Infidelity doesn't mean someone will be a bad president," he said. "What bothers me and, I think, others, is the hypocrisy when someone who's been unfaithful preaches against it."