God’s Shrink
by Michael Adams, Ph.D.
Summary
Like most seasoned psychiatrists, Dr. Michael Adamse thought he’d heard it all. His assuredness falters when a first-time client arrives at his office and announces that he is God. Listening intently to the man, who is obviously suffering from severe psychosis, he agrees to take the case.
What transpires over the course of the next nine sessions will test everything in the doctor’s bag of tricks. As he struggles to unravel the client’s illness before he becomes a danger to himself, a chilling series of coincidences and events cause him to question everything he thought he knew about himself, his place in the world, and life after death.
Excerpt
Most everyone could use a shrink now and again. We all have times in our lives when we could benefit from some support and direction from someone who, for the most part, is objective and outside the loop—an individual with the training and experience to help guide us through turbulent psychological waters.
There’s no mystery as to why I think this way. I was rained formally and conservatively at fine schools, and in my practice I have prided myself in being a level-headed therapist. I have never trusted quick fixes or simplistic interpretations of complex human behavior. My organizing philosophy is to try to integrate and understand people from as many angles as possible. Viewing others on just one level of experience is hopelessly reductionistic. We are, of course, an amalgam of highly interrelational genetic, biologic, familial, and sociocultural factors. In point of fact, we are contextual psychological beings….
Individual seeking treatment arrive for many reasons. People come to me for answers, often expecting that I can turn around a lifetime of dysfunction in less than an hour. Sometimes, I can’t do that in a hundred hours. For the most part, patients want an epiphany. They’re looking for an aha! Moment where it all comes together in one sweeping instant—a nanosecond where confusion, self-doubt, and questioning disappear and their world at once becomes comprehensible….
I decided long ago in my career that I would try to listen well, offer encouragement, and firmly rest on the fat that I had very few definitive answers to many of life’s trying events. Every person had a unique story and circumstance, and I had learned to believe that I could help the most by presuming the least.
At the same time, I quietly held the opinion that I had more or less heard it all. That’s not to say I felt cocky or couldn’t be humbled. Plenty of people reminded me that they would not act in a completely predictable way. Marriages survived when I was sure they’d fail. A lover would come back after a prolonged absence. Terminal cancer turned around. An endlessly relapsing drug addict, defying the odds, contacted me years later to let me know that he and his new family were doing great. There were many sad stories and successes as well.
Even so, after all these years, there wasn’t anyone who was going to really challenge my understanding of the way our minds work. The numerators would certainly vary from person to person, but the basic psychological processes, the common denominators, were essentially the same. I felt with some certainty that, after thirty years of experience, I was pretty much a master mechanic practicing the art and soft social science of psychotherapy.
So when a new patient named Gabriel came in claiming to be God, I knew better than to throw his delusion back at him. Instead, I simply asked him how I, as a mere mortal, could be expected to offer help to the Supreme Being.
That one didn’t throw Gabriel at all. He just smiled and replied, “Well, it turns out everyone can use a shrink. Even God.”
Reprinted with permission of Health Communications Inc. http://www.hcibooks.com
Reviews
"Subtly and sweetly opens our hearts to the possibility of a new relationship with our creator..."--John E. Welshons, author of “When Prayers Aren’t Answered” and “Awakening from Grief”
Author's Biography
Michael Adamse, Ph.D., received his doctorate in clinical psychology from the University of Miami after a pre-doctoral fellowship at Yale. He lectures worldwide for Nova Southeastern University. He also served as a Captain in the U.S. Army Reserve. He specializes in relationship issues and has been in practice for over thirty years. He has appeared repeatedly on MSNBC, the Sally Jesse Raphael Show, and on ABC’s 20/20.