Dr. Klein Quotes in Matchstick Men (2003)

Roy: I'm not a criminal. I'm a con man.

Dr. Klein: The difference being?

Roy: They give me their money.

Dr. Klein: That's a nice rationalization, Roy.

[asking how badly his life is affected by the agoraphobia]

Dr. Klein: And your personal relationships?

Roy: [laughing] What personal relationships?

Dr. Klein: When was the last time you were in one?

[pause]

Dr. Klein: You know... a relationship?

Roy: With a woman? A long time ago.

Dr. Klein: Five years? Ten years?

[pause]

Roy: Keep going, man...

Dr. Klein: Let me ask you something. What would you do if you had to change careers?

Roy: You mean if I wasn't an antiques broker?

Dr. Klein: If you weren't a criminal.

Roy: Huh?

[twitches]

Dr. Klein: I have news, your neurosis is small.

Roy: What? You fucking quack!

[2000 version]

Chris MacNeil: Well, give me an example. Like what specifically did she say?

Dr. Klein: Specifically, Mrs. MacNeil, she advised me to "keep my fingers away from her goddamned cunt."

Dr. Klein: Do you keep any drugs in your house?

Chris MacNeil: No, of course not, nothing like that.

Dr. Klein: Are you sure?

Chris MacNeil: Well, of course I'm sure. I'd tell you. Christ, I don't even smoke grass.

Chris MacNeil: Oh no, that was no spasm. I got on the bed. The whole bed was thumping and rising off the floor and shaking. The whole thing, with me on it!

Dr. Klein: Mrs. MacNeil, the problem with your daughter is not her bed; it's her brain.

Dr. Taney: Pathological states can induce abnormal strength. Accelerated motor performance. Now, for example, say a 90 pound woman sees her child pinned under the wheel of a truck. Runs out and lifts the wheels a half a foot up off the ground - you've heard the story - same thing here. Same principle, I mean.

Chris MacNeil: So what's wrong with her?

Dr. Klein: We still think the temporal lobe.

Chris MacNeil: Oh what are you talking about, for Chrissakes? Did you see her or not? She's acting like she's fucking out of her mind, psychotic, like a... split personality or...

Dr. Taney: There haven't been more than a hundred authentic cases of so-called split personality, Mrs. MacNeil. Now I know the temptation is to leap to psychiatry. But any reasonable psychiatrist would exhaust the somatic possibilities first.

Chris MacNeil: So, what's next?

Dr. Taney: A pneumoencephalogram, I would think. Pin down that lesion. It will involve another spinal.

Chris MacNeil: Oh, Christ.

Dr. Taney: What we missed in the EEG and the arteriograms could conceivably turn up there. At least, it would eliminate certain other possibilities.

Dr. Klein: Any reasonable psychiatrist would eliminate a physical cause first.