Dead Works is a psychological ghost story is about a teenager in therapy because he is seeing ghosts. I realize this sentence makes it sound like the movie The Sixth Sense, but the plot is considerably different. The psychologist character is a graduate student in counseling psychology who was working on his PhD. The young therapist is doing his practicum placement at the university counseling center and he is assigned a teenage client who is seeing ‘things’. 

I mentioned in my previous blog that I tried to make the therapy sessions between Eric, the doctoral counseling psychology student, and Greg, his teenage client, authentic as possible. However, while I think the portrayal is authentic, I wasn’t necessarily factual as I had to edit some of the more mundane components of therapy for dramatic purposes.  In addition, Greg comes off as more verbal and insightful than the average adolescent male, who tends to respond with monosyllabic utterances in these situations until feeling comfortable.

A critical skill all therapists need to display is empathy - which helps establish a therapeutic alliance and helps the client explore his/her problems. Part of being empathic involves being genuine and non-judgmental, which means accepting what the client says and not making critical evaluations of the person. Therefore, in Dead Works, when Greg talks about seeing ghosts, Eric listens and reacts as if he was talking about everyday adolescent concerns like problems in school or conflicts with siblings. He works hard at not judging or ridiculing his client.

Since Dead Works is ostensibly a ghost story, much of the plot takes this “problem” and runs with it. It reality, Eric would have explored other issues or factors that might be playing a role in Greg’s life. With a little digging, Eric and Greg may begin to see the ghost issue as a byproduct of something else like trauma or abuse. The hauntings could actually “fall away” or become unimportant as other issues are addressed. In the case of Dead Works, though, I kept the ghosts front and center in the therapy process and had a blast doing it. For instance, I was able to weave in features of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy as Eric helped Greg consider alternative explanations for the hauntings. Eric also considers Acceptance and Commitment Therapy as a possible intervention for Greg. Finally, Eric’s discussion of Greg in his practicum class also demonstrates how student therapists can explore difficult cases in a supportive atmosphere

Ghosts have not been a frequent occurrence in therapy sessions in my professional experience. My love of horror has not been fed by professional circumstances. That comes from my own twisted enjoyment of things spooky. The heartbreaking, disturbing, and sad experiences related by kids with whom I’ve worked (or discussed by my practicum students in class) are all decidedly human and earthbound. Trauma, abuse, poverty, dysfunctional families, illness, stress, anxiety, anger, depression… the list goes on and on – these are the topics of therapy.

Dead Works is a psychological ghost story is about a teenager in therapy because he is seeing ghosts. My professional life as a professor and a psychologist contributed a chunk of the source material. The psychologist character is a graduate student in counseling psychology who was working on his PhD. The young therapist is doing his practicum placement at the university counseling center and he is assigned a teenage client who is seeing ‘things’.  I regularly teach a Practicum course where the students are being supervised while they provide therapy. Much of the context for the novel takes place within the counseling relationship between the teen and the student therapist, the story is told from the graduate student’s point of view.

Writing fictional accounts of therapy can be tricky for a number of reasons. First, therapy does not necessarily proceed in a linear fashion. That’s not to say there aren’t identifiable phases and predictable sequences. The sequences and phases that make up the therapy process, along with specific therapist behaviors and skills, can be objectively measured. It’s just that the process isn’t necessarily neat. Second, client gains occur incrementally over time. You don’t get those dramatic insightful “aha” moments that are portrayed in movies in which the client is cured in one theatrical session. Third, since change can be incremental, the process may not make for exciting reading. Thus, I had to sacrifice some factual preciseness when writing Dead Works to keep the pace at a dramatic clip.

The therapeutic process tends to proceed through certain phases. When clients begin therapy, they have the opportunity to tell their story. That is, talk about what is troubling them and what they are looking for in therapy. In the first session, the therapist may ask a lot of questions to help the client with this process – essentially the therapist does an intake. During this first session and with every session that follows, the therapist uses a series of active listening and empathy skills to display positive regard for the client and to enhance the therapeutic relationship. Let’s be clear, people may find the prospect of going into an office and telling a complete stranger about their most private thoughts and feelings quite unnerving. So, the therapist has to work hard to gain the client’s trust. He/she does this by listening, being non-judgmental, and being empathic.

As client concerns become clarified and the relationship develops, goals become clearer. The therapist often has a number of different strategies at his/her disposal to help the client make the necessary changes in order to meet those goals. There strategies are heavily tied to the therapist’s theoretical orientation. You’ve heard of these theoretical orientations before – they have readily slipped into everyday usage: cognitive therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, psychodynamic therapy, solution-focused therapy, and so on. My personal theoretical orientation is cognitive-behavioral – and this influences my training of students, my research, and my therapy when I have conducted it in the past.

All therapists, regardless of theoretical orientation, engage in empathy and active listening in order to develop a trusting relationship.  However, the speed through which they move through the phases of therapy or the factors that they focus on with the clients may differ based on the orientation.  Clients will have homework, though, regardless of orientation. The process moves a bit more quickly if clients are willing to do take what they learn in therapy and apply it in real life in between sessions.

When I started Dead Works, I knew I would have to give up a lot of the therapy process. Much of the work takes place “off-screen”. It may not be readily noticeable, but Eric’s theoretical orientation is cognitive-behavioral. You can “see” this by his focus on what Greg is thinking and doing as he is coping with his problems. At the same time, however, Eric is not ignoring Greg’s emotions. He uses active listening and empathy and reflects what Greg is feeling. I try to demonstrate this for the purpose of making their developing relationship appear authentic.

I’ll talk about the content of their sessions in an upcoming blog… 

Shadow Animals by Keith Deininger introduces a new genre: New Mexico Gothic.

Saul’s nine-year old son, Ezzy, goes missing in the Copperton Forest near where the family lives. Saul fears that “missing” isn’t accurate, however. Rather, Saul suspects that the boy has been abducted by something strange and unworldly. Therefore, Saul must leave his despondent wife and trek on foot through the New Mexico wilderness to pursue the captors before Ezzy is lost forever in a world of shadows that does not exist on any map of the 47th state.

If you have read this author before, you know that he masterfully creates worlds that no one has seen. This journey beyond the great green mountain invokes strange wildlife, bizarre creatures, broken down prophets, villages coated in red from slaughtered residents, and something in the shadows that pursues Saul. This quest is a nightmare beyond imagining, and one feels the urgency and despair of Saul as he attempts to find his son before it is too late. Saul’s entire character (his thoughts, emotions, and actions) and in fact all of the other characters are perfectly portrayed – multidimensional and sympathetic.

The author’s descriptions are at times dazzling and at other times terrifying. There is a passage into a town called Sage that is so vivid that the sense of threat can be physically grasped. In fact, much of Mr. Deininger’s writing was almost cinematic. That is, I was “seeing” the events unfold instead of reading them. The writing was that good.

I have read four of the author’s works, and continue to be impressed. This may be my favorite, but to be honest, I think I also said that after reading his others. So, maybe it is a tossup. Nonetheless, this novella is gripping and very entertaining. The nightmarish theme is intense and the outcomes are unpredictable. Take a look. Highly recommended. 

My follow-up fiction-writing efforts after Birth Offering have resulted in two different novellas: Dead Works and Sweet Aswang. Both are around 50,000 words, but tell two completely different types of stories. Sweet Aswang, which was started before Dead Works, is an effort of mine to recapture the monster stories/movies of my youth in the 1950s and 1960s. Sweet Aswang is the first, as far as I know, Type 1 diabetes themed horror books.  I am still tinkering with SA, so it will probably not see the light of day until 2015 (if I’m lucky).  I will have more to say about SA when the time is right.

Dead Works is a psychological ghost story is about a teenager in therapy because he is seeing ghosts. I realize this sentence makes it sound like the movie The Sixth Sense, but the plot is considerably different. My professional life as a professor and a psychologist contributed a chunk of the source material. The psychologist character is a graduate student in counseling psychology who was working on his PhD. The young therapist is doing his practicum placement at the university counseling center and he is assigned a teenage client who is seeing ‘things’.  I regularly teach a Practicum course where the students are being supervised while they provide therapy. Much of the context for the novel takes place within the counseling relationship between the teen and the student therapist, the story is told from the graduate student’s point of view. The book was a lot of fun to write.

The original intent of DW was to describe a ghost hunting expedition in a local that does not go according to plan. I had the basic outline in my head, including a shocking ending – well, which seemed shocking at the time I thought of it. One of the characters had a backstory that involved him seeing a therapist when he was a child – in part due to his paranormal experiences (that is, seeing ghosts). I became increasingly interested in this detail to the point that this plot line took over and became the entire focus of Dead Works.

Once I gave in to the urge to make this episode a book in itself, I had to flesh out the story. I knew almost immediately that the bulk of the story had to take place within the context of therapy sessions. Now, conducting therapy is both a humbling and a challenging endeavor. The work can be exciting and interesting, especially for the client and therapist. But to a casual observer, or a reader, the process of therapy may often be as exciting as watching paint dry. Therefore, the dilemma involved finding a way to be accurate and authentic in describing the process, but not necessarily factual. Factually presenting therapy would drive most readers to boredom. I ended up only illustrating the plot-relevant portions of the therapy and not writing about the mundane stuff.

In addition to the “editing job” on the counseling exchanges, I also decided to provide some backdrop to the two main characters: Eric, the grad student psychologist-in-training and Greg, the teenage client. The vast majority of the story is told from Eric’s point of view. About 60% of the time he is in sessions with Greg. Eric’s remaining time is with friends and in class. Eric also needed a complex past for him to handle Greg’s difficult case – so this is covered at length.

The only time the point of view switches to Greg is during some of his counseling sessions. I decided that having him exclusively narrate his ghostly experiences ran the risk of emotionally distancing the impact of these events for the reader. So, to shake things up, the perspective often shifted to Greg as he is relating his accounts. This doesn’t occur all of the time, but enough to provide variety. I think it works well.

More to talk about in future blogs: skepticism, what therapy is like, impact of abuse, and who knows what else.

Charlie just finishes strapping her infant daughter, Haley, into her car seat when she is confronted by a disturbed young woman with a gun. The woman, Simone, is not some wingnut trying to prove a point by carrying weapons into a department store. Rather, she is intent on carjacking the vehicle and kidnapping Charlie and Haley in the process. Simone is very disturbed and sees this as an opportunity to prove to her world that she is capable of being a mother after suffocating her first baby under the haze of delusional thinking. Much of the action in this short novella takes place in the car with Charlie driving and Simone sitting in the backseat with Haley and pointing the gun at Charlie’s head.

The suspense of The Fading Place is ramped up within the first few sentences and is maintained through the course of the story. There is no letdown. Mary SanGiovanni knows exactly how to maintain the tension mostly through a constant threat of deadly violence directed towards both mother and child. The sense of impending violence is visceral, and the image of the baby napping in her car seat with the pistol inches from her head is both unnerving and gut-wrenching. Simone is characterized as highly unpredictable and her instantaneous shifting between delusional anger and pathetic longing is convincing. Overall, the intensity of the story never wavered. I am not sure if being a parent weighs into this reaction, but I truly dreaded the outcome. Mary SanGiovanni proves that a writer can present a terror-filled ride that does not need anything supernatural to scare a reader – only a panicked mother who will do anything to protect her child.