Cast & Crew:Writer: Brent V. Friedman
Director: Jerry Levine
Story: Rebecca Swanson
Star:
Guest Star: Sydney Tamiia Poitier (Dr. Leslie Coburn), Jeffrey Combs (Harry Raditch), Michael David Simms (Dr. Marks), Jessica Amlee (Carrie), Gina Stockdale (Dying Woman), Donna Yamamoto (Receptionist), Paul Batten (State Health Doctor), Stellina Rusich (Rhonda Harrington)
A chronic hypochondriac, Harry Raditch, visits his doctor, Dr. Coburn, when he begins suffering from a real blood disorder and strange skin protrusions. When Coburn can't place the symptoms, Harry, a bookdealer, reveals that his disease is from a story in a science fiction book. Then others start coming in with the same symptoms, starting with Harry's housekeeper and then Dr. Coburn herself. The disease spreads quickly and Coburn soon believes Harry created the effect mentally so she tries to convince Harry that a meteor strike contains a rare element that can destroy the virus and give him the placebo injection. When Harry believes himself ^cured^ everyone else is cured as well. But Harry obsesses about the meteor strike, which he thinks would cause the extinction of the human race in an ice age . . . and Harry makes that come true too.
Host: (opening narration) Dr. Leslie Coburn has always treated Harry with a placebo, an imaginary cure for his imaginary illnesses. But what will this young doctor do when her patient contracts a real disease? A disease found only in The Twilight Zone.
Host: (closing narration) Dr. Leslie Coburn had a brilliant idea using an imaginary cure for an imaginary illness. But like the virus itself, Harry took her cure to heart and he made it real. A testament to the amazing powers of the mind, in The Twilight Zone.
Reflection:
Sometimes we believe that what we think is true, perhaps sometimes it's true but not all times. The episode of the twilight zone entitled “the Placebo Effect” proves to us that what we think are sometimes is in our mind only and never ever exist.
In my logic subject last semester our professor says that our mind is ordained to know the truth, but why is it that sometimes we commit mistakes in our decision? Where is the truth there?
Perhaps it is not our mind, it is our judgments that we choose to believe in.
“We should not pretend to understand the world only by the intellect. The judgment of the intellect is only part of the truth.”
Carl Gustav Jung (Swiss psychiatrist, Psychologist and Founder of the Analytic Psychology, 1875-1961)
