Rikki Ducornet's new novel "Netsuke" has gotten a good deal of critical attention, much of it directed at her unnamed narrator, a psychoanalyst who ruthlessly sleeps with his patients. Reviewing the book in The New York Times Book Review, Michael Cunningham, author of the Pulitzer-Prize-winning "The Hours" and other novels, pointed out that Ducornet "has relied overmuch on certain assumptions ... that anyone who practices psychiatry is incompetent at best and, at worst, sadistic and narcissistic, an exterminator of the spirit."
I agree with Cunningham and would go further in stating that it is a cliché to depict a therapist as a sexual predator.
That is not to say that predatory shrinks don't exist. The father of a kindergartner at Sidwell Friends, a private school in Washington, D.C., recently sued the school and its former psychologist for allegedly having an affair with his wife at the same time that the psychologist was treating his child.
My own wife, Barbara, has had bad experiences with three different male therapists, one of whom made her an ultimatum, "Are you going to be my patient or my friend?" Another tried to sabotage my wife's budding relationship with me, and a third was so cold to her that he failed to call and see how she was doing after she was hospitalized last year.
So, I recognize that there are shrinks who behave like the one in Ducornet's novel.
But they are not the norm. In nearly 25 years in and out of therapy, I have never received treatment from a psychiatrist who was incompetent or sadistic.
While I have dealt with Freudian tyrants, the kind whose default mode is judgmental silence, a stance that at least at one time proliferated at Ivy League schools, I spent only a few years with them on the East Coast.
During the bulk of my time in therapy, 11 years, I worked with Dr. Michael McGrail, a progressive, thoughtful man, who passed away four years ago this May 27.
Dr. McGrail would have chuckled at the portrayal of the analyst in "Netsuke." If anything Dr. McGrail knew what it was like to feel threatened by a patient. I only became aware of this when I sensed that there was something unusual going on one day at the office. I asked Dr. McGrail about the buzz of activity between him and his assistant; he smiled and said with his customary poise that one of his patients had been making nasty phone calls.
Like everything else in his life, Dr. McGrail handled this aspect of his practice with aplomb, even humor.
As I have written before, Dr. McGrail began each session with a joke, usually one in slightly bad taste. It was his way of relaxing.
That was understandable, as he had a life that was filled with responsibility. He took care of his father and mother, moving them to his house in West Hollywood, where he built them a bedroom. He employed his brother as a carpenter, and he was a father figure to his sister's child.
He was also a father figure to me.
When I started dating Barbara, Dr. McGrail echoed my own father in suggesting places for us to go on dates, such as the Hollywood Bowl and Philippe's for French dips. He also made it very clear to me that he approved of Barbara, but that was only after he had met her and saw that Barbara and I share a love for language. When he read an illustrated children's book that Barbara had written about me, he cheerfully reported that Barbara had depicted me "as a hero."
I never asked Dr. McGrail where he went to medical school, though he told me that he did his residency at USC. That was where I spent a week in the psychiatric ward in 1997, when I had my first psychotic break.
At that time, as I was leaving the hospital, I asked Dr. McGrail if I would recover. He said he was "99-percent certain" that I would.
I don't know if I believed him back then. But all these years later, I am doing well, writing regularly and about to celebrate my 10th wedding anniversary with Barbara. I did experience a relapse in 1999, an episode that Dr. McGrail guided me through as well.
At the time of Dr. McGrail's passing, I wrote a remembrance of him in The Los Angeles Times, in which I invoked the deceased Emily Gibbs (née Webb), one of the leading characters in Thornton Wilder's "Our Town," who asks the Stage Manager if anyone appreciates all the quotidian aspects of life. The Stage Manager reflects, then says, "Poets, maybe."
That exchange impresses upon me the importance of appreciating those whom you love. While I did not realize it at the time, I probably did love Dr. McGrail, and he loved me, too. That may not be the norm between patients and therapists, but I tend to think it is at least as accurate as the depiction in "Netsuke."