​            When I was in college, I made my first effort at writing fiction. I took a short fiction writing class and enjoyed it. I had fun, and I thought I did a pretty good job. That effort, however, was also my last attempt for decades. Over three of them to be exact.
            I resumed writing fiction in earnest when our daughter was preparing for college. I never thought I would actually try and publish anything. In fact, my first effort was to find out if I could actually do it. After completing a short story and then a novel, I was ready to try peddling the latter around. I was accustomed to the academic writing process which meant I was used to being rejected. All by way of saying, I expected rejection. Well, I got rejection, and rejection, and rejection. Agents were either non-responsive or sent nice form rejection letters. Then I tried small presses. Same responses. Reject, reject, reject. Finally, an acceptance from Damnation Books for my debut novel, Birth Offering.
            Did academic writing and publishing in scientific journals prepare me for the rigor of fiction? The answer is a general “yes”. Yes, there is a submission process. Yes, there is a review (and rejection) process, and an editing process that often includes major revisions. Unlike fiction review, which is often the decision of one person, research articles undergo a blind review conducted by two to three independent scientists who specialize in similar areas as the author of the manuscript. Reviewers provide their review to the editor of the journal who makes a decision based on the reviews.
            I thought I was immune to the distress of submitting and resubmitting, but alas…no. The more I got into the life of a fiction writer, I wanted to be successful. When it started happening… well then, phew. In all honesty, “successful” in my mind was not financial (that’ll never happen), but turning out stories that people might enjoy. Of course, I was incredibly surprised that not everyone liked horror. Imagine that. What’s the matter with these people?

​My writing has taken multiple forms over the past 30 years. For the first 25 years, my writing has been strictly academic and psychological in content. I’m a university professor and a psychologist, so I was trained to communicate in a stilted professional fashion. That was fine, and I proved to be a better than average writer when it came to empirical research articles for psychology journals and the occasional psychological report (although those days writing the latter were early in my career).  
While writing fiction has always been a dream of mine, I had little time to branch out seriously into this domain. I dabbled every now and again, as far back as the mid-90’s, but didn’t take it up in earnest until five years ago.
When writing a research manuscript, psychologists (and many others) use APA format (APA = American Psychological Association). The format has a distinct style for organizing manuscripts, citing references, displaying figures and tables, and so on. When completed, the author—or more likely authors—submit the manuscript to a journal for blind review. The title page with author names is removed, so the reviewers, who are established experts in the same or related fields, provide critical feedback and recommendations to the editor on whether to accept or reject the manuscript or return the manuscript to the authors for revision. If authors decide to revise the manuscript based on the reviewers comments, then they do exactly that and resubmit it to the journal—where it is sent out again for review.
The process is arduous and the acceptance rate for top-tier journals (and even many mid-tier journals) is low. I have been living this life for nearly 30 years and have gotten used to it. If you have ever heard the phrase “Publish or Perish”, then you have an idea of the stress level. University faculty members only have about 5 or 6 years to generate research which has an impact on their field. That is, they need to establish a track record of a research publication pipeline which includes developing, ongoing, and submitted/published research to justify their employment. If they do not show regular yearly publication of multiple research articles, they are out of a job.
Does this process prepare an individual for other types of writing careers? I’ll talk about that in my next blog.

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… 

I've been more or less MIA on the blog this past week or so. The semester is starting - this is the fist week of classes. That means final tweaking of the syllabus for my classes, meeting with colleagues and students... Not a bad time of year, just hectic. That also means my (non-academic) writing has been non-existent. My email has been piling up too, so I am more or less running behind. On top of this, it's back to the sleep lab next week to try out CPAPs. I have mild to moderate sleep apnea - I stop breathing 20 or so times an hour. Creepy.

Anyhow, the blogs will resume soon. A few book reviews will be coming, etc. 

Trailers for the upcoming season of the Walking Dead have been appearing all over the place recently. I’ve watched them, of course, since I am a fan. The DVR is set up to record all new episodes between now and eternity. The series is well done with a great cast, special effects, and story line. Although, the pace of the series is much too slow at times with seemingly nothing happening for hours on end.

Apocalyptic fiction is hot too, and has been for a number of years now, mostly in the form of zombie novels. The latter have been hit or miss for me, mostly miss to be honest.  If you read one zombie novel, you’ve read them all it seems. That’s an overgeneralization, of course. I can think of a couple of zombie novels that have been quite good. Right off the top of my head is Rot and Ruin by Jonathan Maberry. Actually marketed as a young adult novel, I found the characterizations and the settings to be outstanding. This is one of those novels that actually captures the perspective of a teenager in a horrendous setting. A number of people disliked The Cell by Stephen King, but I really enjoyed it. There is something satisfying about cell phones turning people into zombies, as if they hadn’t already. I’m a university professor and it is not uncommon to see hordes of twenty year olds walking on campus while texting. At times the campus can be eerily quiet with the exception of a faint pattering of thumbs on tiny keypads or screens. Finally, the Swedish zombie novel, Handling the Undead by John Ajvide Lindqvist, is a favorite simply because it is such a unique take on the zombie genre.

When it comes to non-zombie apocalyptic novels, I can name a number of stellar examples. First (and second if you consider them separately) are the first two books in the Passage trilogy by Justin Cronin. The Passage and The Twelve are powerful novels that excel because they are literary pieces containing startling and well developed characters and imaginative settings. Each character is an individual with emotion, thoughts, and history. Patterns of behavior and motivations are consistent and logical (which is huge in my humble opinion in making a novel work).  The virals (vampires) are brutal, and survival of characters is not guaranteed. Another creative spin on the part of Cronin is his ability to describe this complex world in a non-linear fashion. I cannot wait for the third in the series.

When you consider top stories of the apocalypse, you have to include The Stand by Stephen King. The weaving of that tale is nicely constructed, although I would recommend reading the first edition/version. King later came out with an extended version which contained portions of the narrative that an editor had deleted when it was first published. I can tell you, the editor was right – there was a reason these sections were initially deleted. They added nothing to the story and were downright embarrassing to read at times.

Finally, a truly horrifying end of the world novel that isn’t a “horror” novel – at least on the surface – is Alas, Babylon by Pat Frank. Published in 1958, this novel tells the tale of a nuclear war between the US and the Soviet Union. I read this as a kid, and the passages that describe the nuclear attack and the immediate panic afterwards are some of the most terrifying words I have ever read. There are scenes that are still seared in my memory. Check out this classic if you haven’t had the opportunity.

Bullying and The Cold Spot, Part 3

I am continuing my comments on bullying with this blog – but first a thanks to The Cold Spot by J.G. Faherty – the ghost story about bullying which got the whole thing started in the first place.

Some practitioners are troubled with the proliferation of bullying programs in our schools (for instance, see Bully Nation by Susan Eva Porter). Their argument is interesting: we’ve adopted a bully-victim mindset that makes the problem worse and not better. According to this viewpoint, labeling one kid a bully and the other a victim has unfortunate consequences. First, the “bully language” is overly simplified and doesn’t address the nuance of the situation and the kids involved. Second, by being labeled, the kids are assigned and seen as fitting the role – which is very hard to escape. As a result, they are either demonized or pitied, and they cannot learn from experiences and grow from the experiences. For the “victim”, this produces victimhood and does not promote resilience. For the “bully”, there is no chance to reinvent him or herself. Third, labels make all kids the enemy – they are pitted against one another (when really, this is an adult problem in terms of how we should structure environments and deal with problematic behavior). Finally, developing anti-bullying programs, which often have zero-tolerance policies, sets up kids to fail – because kids, being kids, are bound to make mistakes in the future.

The folks who see anti-bullying programs as problematic would like to see the bully-victim language discarded. Instead, the emphasis should be on helping kids who are on the receiving end (I’m trying to avoid the “v-word”) develop resilience. Teaching and developing resilience would involve helping kids learn how to deal with unpleasant situations, develop coping skills, assertiveness skills, social support and communication skills, etc. – anything that would lead to personal growth. For the kids who perpetrate the unwanted behavior (avoiding the “b-word”), a pattern of responding should be set up which insures safety first (for all kids) and includes swift consequences for misbehavior – and consequences which “fit the crime” (this includes clarity of expectations – kids need to know ahead of time what is expected of them, and they need to know that consequences will be applied consistently).  In all cases, adults are there to support the kids, remain calm, and model and demonstrate appropriate problem solving behavior.

The advocates to eliminate or move away from anti-bullying programs raise some interesting points. The methods for dealing with the behavior seem on target to me. I don’t know how well their approach would work in a truly dangerous or intimidating environment, especially with older teenagers. I can report on a case with which I am familiar where a therapist took such an approach in helping a child who was bullied unmercifully. The therapist worked with the child to develop coping skills and resilience skills to address the painful distress and isolation of being a target. The results were phenomenal. This kid came out of the counseling with a stronger sense of self, an awareness of personal strength, an awareness of how to deal with unpleasant people, and a renewed sense of assertiveness. This is not to say that the experience became a “piece of cake”. The kid had to deal with some very difficult things – but that kid dealt with them and matured as a result.  While this success was remarkable, I am not convinced that we should move away from anti-bullying programs. For me, the jury is still out.

All of these thoughts as a result of a horror novella called The Cold Spot… I hope Mr. Faherty is pleased that his work generated these thoughts. Bullying is a very sad and frustrating problem, and he captures the issue in a unique way – within a ghost story and then some.  Whatever the form of the narrative, we need to be constantly reminded of how kids are hurt – and in some cases very deeply – on a daily basis from peers while right under the noses of adults.

Okay, I am continuing my comments on bullying with this blog – but first a thanks to The Cold Spot by J.G. Faherty – the ghost story about bullying which got the whole thing started in the first place.

A number of factors related to bullying often come as a surprise to people. First, kids who do the bullying are not the stereotypical antisocial hoodlums. Very often these kids can move among various roles: bully, popular kid, smart kid, jock, etc. They can be members of multiple groups. Second, they do not bully all of the time, so they have friends and social groups – and, this is interesting, they often report having been bullied as well. Third, while boys tend to engage in more physical bullying than girls, girls are masters at relational aggression (e.g., spreading rumors, excluding a girl from the group, withdrawing friendship).  The intent of this social manipulation is to cause damage to another kid’s social standing or self esteem. When you include both physical and relational aggression into the mix, gender differences between bullying in boys and girls disappears. Regardless, bullying of both forms indicates forms of aggressive behavior that occur within a context of an imbalance of power, are intentionally harmful, and occur repetitively.

The consequences of bullying are tremendous for victims: higher rates of depression, stress, isolation, anxiety, and in some cases suicidal ideation. Peer relationships are disrupted, and the disruption can persist into adulthood with these individuals having difficulty developing and maintaining relationships and trusting others.

Interventions to decrease bullying in school settings generally involve: arranging or altering the environment to minimize the circumstances which allow bullying to occur (this could be as simple as having teachers standing at their classroom doors during class transitions to monitor the hallways), training teachers and other school personnel how to identify and respond quickly if they observe bullying, establishing rules and specific consequences for certain forms of misbehavior or problem behavior which are consistently applied,  and developing a solution-oriented mindset where teachers and staff can share solutions that they have found successful in reducing the problem behavior.

I will continue with how The Cold Spot got me thinking about bullying in the next blog…

We’ve seen some startling examples of the negative impact of bullying on victims: media reports of suicide and attempted suicide by children, adolescents, and young adults in college. In addition, many personal accounts of misery and depression of those victims reach us seemingly daily. Yet, the issue persists, despite many attempts to change the way our schools operate and efforts to change our very cultural attitudes toward bullying.

I was reminded again about the topic of bullying after my recent read of The Cold Spot by J.G. Faherty. I found his use of bullying as a device for framing his horror novel to be rather unique and I enjoyed it immensely. As a psychologist and a professor, I am used to addressing bullying from those professional perspectives. I teach a graduate level course entitled Counseling Children and Adolescents, and one of the favorite topics is bullying. The reason, of course, is that the graduate students in our counseling program who are placed in settings (schools and clinics) where they work with kids often come face to face with this issue. Dealing with bullying is difficult. Circumstances vary across incidents, the situations and kids involved are often quite complex, and people (that is, adults) often don’t know how to address it.

I will continue with a discussion on bullying prompted by reading The Cold Spot in the next blog… 

If you’ve been reading the two previous blogs, I’ve been trying to summarize an article by Mathias Clasen entitled “Monsters Evolve: A Biocultural Approach to Horror Stories” which was published in the Review of General Psychology in 2012. According to Clasen, “Horror stories trigger the evolved danger management systems.” Put another way, Clasen indicates that

“horror fiction capitalizes on cognitive and physiological machinery that is a product of natural selection”

The question remains why many people continue to like horror stories? If horror triggers our danger management systems unnecessarily, why do we seek them out?

Well, here is where it gets a little tricky. More importantly, at least as far as I am concerned, here is where psychology begins to play a huge role. There are two potential explanations:

1.      We can loosely categorize this along demographic lines: Target audiences for horror. In talking demographics, we also end up considering gender roles. The main target of horror movies and the biggest consumers are adolescent boys. Beyond the obvious fact that this group is a little on the goofy end of things to begin with, male adolescents often engage in behavior that has been considered rites of passage. Some of this is culturally sanctioned, other rituals are more informal. Regardless, going to scary movies together and surviving the horror together can be considered a male bonding experience (according to Clasen). “Hey, dude, we survived and we did it together” (although teen boys probably wouldn’t report it in this manner). At the same time, girls tend not to be the market audience, but are often taken to these movies by their dates (the guys who love them – the movies in this case, and maybe the girls). Now, according to Professor Clasen, teen girls like boys who are brave and boys like to reciprocate by being brave (that is, gender appropriate reactions to horror movies). If everything goes according to plan, both parties get their wish – and boys also get to watch a cool movie to boot. According to Clasen, this is known as the snuggle theory of horror. (Please, I’m just reporting his argument).

2.      The second explanation makes more sense to me. Basically, it is this: we vicariously learn how to behave in extremely dangerous situations in the relative safety of a movie theatre or our own homes while reading a book. The situation as portrayed on a screen (or in a book for that matter) is indeed well beyond the norm and highly life threatening – but it is fictional. As a result, we learn how to mentally prepare for and handle unbelievable situations without the risk. This process has its parallel in childhood play. Kids act out practical strategies of survival in all kinds of games and activities. Pretend play is fun and pleasurable – and kids are vicariously learning all kinds of behaviors which are applicable to real life in years to come: problem solving, negotiating, self-control, assertiveness, physical safety responses and so on.

To put it simply, enjoying horror stories allows us to practice survival strategies and to form bonds with other survivors – all within very low-risk situations. As Clasen states, consuming horror is adaptive – we learn new skills for survival and practice and rehearse them in thrilling and uncanny encounters that aren’t real. How cool is that?

What about the people who don’t like horror? Well, I suppose they’ll be relying on us to keep them safe during the upcoming apocalypse. It’ll be annoying, but what the heck – everyone will get a chance to snuggle.

Clasen, M. (2012). Monsters evolve: A biocultural approach to horror stories. Review of General Psychology, 16, 222-229.