shrink n.1
1. (orig. US, also shrinker) a psychoanalyst, psychotherapist or a psychiatrist.
![[US]](/static/img/flags/us.png "United States") | Slam the Big Door (1961) 131: ‘You need that shrinker.’ ‘Anybody that doesn’t agree with you is sick?’. | |
 | Golden Spur (1991) 258: Does this shrinker know there are a lot of other images in his old simple case? | |
![[Aus]](/static/img/flags/aus.png "Australia") | Barry McKenzie [comic strip] in Complete Barry McKenzie (1988) 86: Might run into a patient. We shrinks can’t be too careful. | |
| letter 10 Nov. in Joint (1972) 236: They have two shrinks for every convict. | |
| Bug Jack Barron 29: Why can’t he puke his being and nothingness on some shrink? | |
| Dog Soldiers (1976) 245: They’d take me down to the shrink and he’d try to piss me off. | |
| After Hours 73: Where do all the Park Avenue people go to get their head straightened out [...] They go to the shrink, right? | |
| Brown’s Requiem 66: My probation officer and my shrink have been helping me out a lot. | |
| Homeboy 42: The shrink said I was a socialist or sumptin. | |
![[UK]](/static/img/flags/uk.png "United Kingdom") | Guardian G2 2 Aug. 5: The term ‘head shrinker’. Now shortened to ‘shrink’ [...]. | |
| ‘Kill You’ 🎵 And the way things seem, I shouldn’t have to pay these shrinks / this eighty G’s a week to say the same things. | |
| A Steady Rain I iii: You’re obsessed, Mr. Big-Bad, see a shrink, little couch time, get over it? | |
| Broken Shore (2007) [ebook] If he wants a shrink there’s this bloke Bertrand saw when he went sad after that Croat cunt stabbed him. | |
| Running the Books 195: I spotted the prison shrink in the staff cafeteria. | |
| Crongton Knights 70: ‘My mum is a psychologist’ [...] ‘Blinking shrinks!’ . | |
![[Scot]](/static/img/flags/sco.png "Scotland") | Bloody January 72: Fine blue copperplate writing: ‘Alison Horne MD MRCPsych’. In other words, the shrink. | |
| Man-Eating Typewriter 198: The Shrink’s eek was stiff [...] The Shrinker dropped the treat switch. | |
| (con. 1962) Enchanters 53: Shrink Man tells Marilyn [Monroe] he’s taking a month’s vacation. | |
| (con. 1962) Enchanters 69: Shrinkee couches and chairs. Shrinker chairs. |
2. (also shrinking) psychoanalysis.
| First Directive (1985) 156: I hoped she was off the shrink kick. [Ibid.] 157: I can’t take any more shrinking tonight. |
In derivatives
the client of a psycho-analyst, -therapist or psychiatrust.
| Processed World 43/1: We began by doing role plays, acting out the part of shrinker and shrinkee. | |
| Seaward 136: ‘Shrinkee?’ Terry repeated the term in a mincing voice, to register just how inane he found it. ‘That’s the one being shrunk’. | |
| Meet My Shadow 14: [I] sit in what I suppose is the shrinkee’s chair. | |
| (con. 1962) Enchanters 69: Shrinkee couches and chairs [...] Shrinkee entry / exit doors. Shrinkees were skulkers and back-door habitués. They feared exposure. |
a female psychoanalyst or psychiatrist.
| Faggots 277: That’s what my dyke shrinkette said. |
(orig. US) madness; spec. a state of mind that makes it advisable for a person so afflicted to consult a psychoanalyst.
| Laura’s Story Ch. 213 🌐 Laura took her arm and steered her toward the door. ‘Jane is a little . . . unbalanced,’ she lied evenly. ‘She’s in therapy. You know, shrinksville? She sometimes has delusions, poor thing.’. |
In compounds
(Aus.) a psychiatric institution.
| Lily on the Dustbin 51: A psychiatric hospital is a ‘shrink klink’, ‘giggle bin’, ‘nut factory’ or ‘peanut factory’. |
In phrases
1. (orig. US) a psychoanalyst, a psychotherapist, a psychiatrist.
| Sisters of the Night 7: Talk to the [...] social workers, the cops, the headshrinkers. | |
| Mad mag. June 45: Dr Joyce Brothers is one of the best-looking headshrinkers we’ve seen in many a day. | |
| Baron’s Court All Change (2011) 22: a head shrinker that had really got to the bottom of your problem, because he’d found out the cause of your madness. | |
| Angry Eye 146: The traumatic change [...] provides revealing diagnostic material for any head-shrinker worth an ounce of analytical civet. | |
![[Ire]](/static/img/flags/ire.png "Ireland") | Grass Arena (1990) 105: We saw the head-shrinker at Brixton Prison. No need to act. He put us down as chronic alkies. | |
| The Joy (2015) [ebook] [Y]our average well-meaning [...] expensively dressed head-shrinker. | |
| Guardian Guide 5–12 June 77: Newly-arrived head shrink at the Psycho-Neurotic Institute. | |
| Guardian G2 2 Aug. 5: The term ‘head shrinker’. Now shortened to ‘shrink’, [...] designates the crew of Freudian psychoanalysts for whom ‘proper’ doctors have an inextinguishable contempt. | |
| Mad mag. July 37: When the kid goes on a rampage one day, we blame the headshrinker. | |
| Gutted 94: I looked at the card. ‘Mac, this is a head-shrinker.’ ‘No. Therapist — different’. | |
| ‘The First day of Hell Week’ in ThugLit Dec. [ebook] ‘Let me know the next time you feel like sharing some feelings and I’ll find you a head shrink’. | |
| (con. 1962) Enchanters 46: A batshit crazy headshrinker. |
2. attrib. use of sense 1.
| in Sweet Daddy 1: I’m not like a lot of the gooks here making with this head shrinker talk. | |
| Notes of a Dirty Old Man (1973) 61: And soon we will have the reports from the headshrinker panels. | |
| Carlito’s Way 48: [O]nly time I ever doubted myself—what am I doing, where am I going? All that headshrinker jive that fucks a man up. |
3. a session of psychoanalysis.
| First Directive (1985) 163: I don’t have suckers to squeeze at seventy-five dollars a throw for a head shrink. |
(orig. US) to psychoanalyse.
| West Side Story II i: In my opinion, this child don’t need to have his head shrunk at all. Juvenile delinquency is purely a social disease! | |
| in Sweet Daddy 61: They’d make with the cracks. You know, getting your head shrunk, all the crap. | |
| Underground Dict. (1972). | |
| First Directive (1985) 145: Why don’t they quit their crummy jobs [...] and get sane so they won’t need their heads shrunk? | |
| (con. 1962) Enchanters 181: ‘Did you headshrink Monroe, boss?’. |