Among many other careers, Dr Bob Rich is an award-winning writer, editor and psychologist.
Christine: It's certainly a very rewarding experience to cure someone from a deep-rooted phobia. But I'm sure there are clients who refuse to cooperate and make it difficult for you to help them. What do you do when that happens?
Bob: Well, let's get our terms of reference right from the start. I NEVER cure anyone of anything. I am a catalyst who induces change in people. I am not a psyche mechanic, but a helper who happens to know the kinds of things that have been useful to other people with similar problems.
No technique works for everyone, and every client is likely to teach me something new. With phobias, the standard technique is 'systematic desensitization', which is supported by an enormous amount of scientific evidence. It has a problem: many sufferers find it scary in the extreme.
If something works, do more of it. If it doesn't work, try something else. The next 'something else' I might suggest is to look on the fear as an enemy, an entity within who is trying to harm you and even kill you. It feeds on your fear. Every time it manages to constrain you, it gets fatter and stronger. Every time you stand up to it and defy it, even a tiny bit, it gets weaker... This is 'narrative therapy', and I think in these terms even when using other techniques.
There are indeed clients who don't want change, but typically they are not anxiety victims. Anxiety feels so awful that people are keen to do anything to escape it. Steve de Shazer, the famous solution-focused researcher, has divided clients into 'customers' -- people who are willing to make changes -- 'complainants' -- who want someone else to make changes -- and 'visitors' or 'window shoppers' who are only there because someone made them come. These are truculent teenagers or horrible husbands or whingeing wives. They are rarely if ever sufferers from anxiety.
But if one were, you might have heard the light bulb joke: How many psychologists does it take to change a light bulb? [Only one, but the light bulb must WANT to be changed.]
Christine: So some light bulbs would rather stay in their sockets. Bob: Christine, I don't analyze anyone. The term has a Freudian ring, and I don't wear such jewellery.
Many of my characters go through periods of anguish, face problems that seem too large for them to cope with, suffer in all the ways people do. After all, they are people. But then either they find their own hidden strengths -- in the way real people do -- or another character helps them. By some strange coincidence, the helpers in my books use techniques that are startlingly similar to what I do as a psychologist. In fact, I have learned quite a few tricks from people in my books.
In Sleeper, Awake, when Flora Fielding awakes, her major distress is information overload. Everything is alien, she is hovering between complete denial and horrified acceptance. When she breaks down, Mirabelle Karlsen comes to her rescue and uses plain TLC: a strong arm around her shoulder, empathy, emotional support. And it is enough. Later in the book, it is Flora herself who is the therapist.
Coming back to me learning from my characters: Currently I am e-counseling a young lady who is the survivor of a horrifying childhood. I won't give more details than that. She has learned to survive over the years in part by emptying herself of feeling and emotion. Just today, I emailed her a chapter from my book The Start of Magic, where my heroine Heather copes with her tragedies in the same way, with much the same destructive effects.
In general, I find that fictional stories are an excellent counseling medium. I have often written stories for or with a client, particularly a child client. One such story is posted at
http://anxietyanddepression-help.com/healtale.html
Christine: Healing through writing/reading -- you're right, it really works. When I heard that Douglas Adams died of a heart attack I was incredibly sad, because his books helped me through a rough stretch in life. What kind of books do you like to read?
Bob: I used to read 5 to 10 books a week. but have very little time for reading at the moment. The books I edit can be good reading, but this is not necessarily so, and also when you are editing you have a different approach than when you read for pleasure.
By and large, non-fiction books are a form of study. I read them if I need the information in them. Fiction is, as I said, for pleasure. That means that I avoid horror for horror's sake. My daughter Natalie has forced me to read a Stephen King, but I didn't manage to finish it. I like a book that makes me feel better for having read it. This is like music. When I listen to music, I want it to give me pleasant emotions.
So, I love books that take me away from my world into adventures somewhere else. My favorite author is Dick Francis. I wish I could write like him. I enjoy the Dragons of Pern series by Anne McCaffrey, the Belgariad series from David Eddings, and have read the Tolkien books so often I could probably recite long tracts from memory if you pushed me.
I enjoy books by lots of other writers, but this should give you the idea.
One thing I do NOT engage in is watching TV, and I rarely go to the movies. Reading is a creative exercise. The author presents raw materials, and from this I, the reader, construct a make-believe world. If the author is good at her task, I actually move into that world for the moment, and become the character whose point of view we are following right now. At the least, I become an observer, the words on the page (or screen) magically transformed into sights and sounds and smells and emotions.
In contrast, a film is where I passively watch someone else's creativity. This is why a film of a book you enjoyed is always disappointing: even an excellent film will be different from what
you had constructed.
Christine: So what would you do if a producer wanted to turn Sleeper, Awake into a big blockbuster movie? Would you sign the deal? Would you go and watch the film?
Bob: I'd jump at it, provided...
That's right, I'd have conditions. I'd want a say in choosing the Director. The Gods Must Be Crazy and Dances With Wolves were films I highly approved of (and really liked). So, I'd want the Director of one of them.
Secondly, I'd want to be involved in the conversion of the story into a script. If necessary, I'd do a screenwriting course, though I told myself after my last attendance at University that 14 years of tertiary study is enough, no more exams and assignments for me.
In a way, all my books are very good raw material for films, because of a weakness I have: I am very poor at thinking in visual images. Everything is in words. I used to play competitive chess. Where other good players could 'see' the potential in a position, I got to it by a list of verbal descriptions.
This means that I have become good at converting almost everything into verbal explanations. I can teach people in fields where I know a lot less than the 'experts', because I can explain things in plain language.
One problem with Sleeper, Awake as a movie is that it involves a lot of nudity. The coming world is tropical, a lot hotter than what we have now. Greenhouse effect, remember? Dress codes will inevitably be affected. How do people in tropical countries dress?
For the 21st Century watcher, naked bodies are a trigger for thoughts of sex. In a near-nudist culture, this is simply not so. And this is the difficulty: how to convey the feel of a near-nudist
culture without inappropriately titillating the viewer?
Christine: A good director would certainly find ways to convey this. It's a pity so many excellent books are never filmed. What are you up to at the moment? Any new self-help and/or fiction titles in the making?
Bob: I am three quarters finished with a book that has a ready-made market, and an American agent is also interested. Title is Personally Speaking: Single-session email therapy with Dr Bob Rich. It will be 50 pairs of emailed cries for help and my answers, covering practically the whole range of problems that distress people. Most of the questions were posted at http://www.queendom.com/ where I am a member. As such I am required to give free answers to two questions a month, in exchange for very substantial benefits. Many of my paying clients have found me through QueenDom. I have added suitably disguised cases from my private practice, limiting myself to those where I supplied just one answer.
Also I am over halfway through the next volume of the Stories of the Ehvelen: The Making of a Forest Fighter. The Ehvelen, the REAL Little People, fought over a generation against the Doshi, a nomadic people. On the whole, they hated the Doshi, but there were five they respected and even loved. One of these was the Doshi hero Ribtol, and the book is entirely from his point of view. It starts when he is 16 and ends three years later at the first great Ehvelen victory.
Christine: Good luck with those two books and all your other future projects. You're the kind of person I'd like to meet over a cup of tea. Which reminds me of the wrap-up question I always ask at the end of an interview: what is your favorite dish? Do you have a recipe you'd like to share?
Bob: You are welcome at any time, and my wife Jolanda is a champion cook so you'd get a lot more than a cup of tea! I used to be a good cook myself, but she enjoys it so much that we specialize: she enjoys the cooking, I enjoy the fruit of her labor. But here is a Hungarian recipe from my childhood:
RAKOTT KRUMPLI [literal translation: 'stacked spuds']
This can be made with all ingredients specially prepared, but that's cheating. Rakott krumpli is a way of using leftovers. More exactly, you deliberately cook too much one day, so you have an elastic meal that can accommodate surprise visitors, and if they don't come, you have the makings for a meal tomorrow. Saves on time and cooking energy too.
Lightly grease a casserole dish or two. Line the bottom and sides with thin slices of boiled potatoes. Then put in a layer of thin slices of boiled eggs, then spuds again, then eggs... until the dish is full. The top layer should be potatoes.
That's the base. As you fill, you need to sprinkle in bread crumbs, salt and something juicy and tart like sour cream or yogurt. And while you are at it, you can put in approximately whatever savory leftovers you happen to have, or bacon pieces, grated cheese, onions. You are limited only by imagination and the contents of your kitchen. But the basic recipe is pretty good by itself.
It looks nice if you brown some bread crumbs in a frypan and put that on the top. All the ingredients are already cooked, so all you need to do is to pop the dish into a moderate oven until the liquid components (yogurt or whatever) start bubbling.
Christine: Mmmm, absolutely mouthwatering.