Fact or fantasy

Inserting autobiographical material is a hazardous business. Of course, every author projects some of himself into whatever he expresses. That is the assumption behind projective testing, a lost art. (It never was a science.) But using actual incidents or real people as the basis of your characters invites trouble.

In Shrink: Odyssey of a therapist I used myself as the hero. A large section of the book is taken from my own experiences. I did grow up in the Bronx in a Jrewish family, I attended Cornell and The University of Pennsylvania, and served in the army. I became a psychologist, worked for many years at a residential facility for handicpaped persons, and maintain a private practice. At some pont in the novel fact ends and fiction begins. Even in the autobioographical material, however, I made some changes to fit the personality of Morrie. Friends who know me, who have read Shrink draw their own conclusions, sometimes accurate, often erroeous. Both my wife and a female friend see the friend as the model for Morrie's wife--flattering to my friend, not so good for my wife. I have been asked whether I was ever attacked by a client in my office. I have not. I co-worker assumes that the hero of the sequel, Finding Jackson, also Morrie, is based on a mutual co-worker. (It is not. Still me.) I have never treated a multiple personality. I have never treated anyone who believed themselves to be reincarnated. If someday I do perhaps I'll know how to provide an intervention.

The locale that served as the birthplace for the villain in Shrink is based on the town of Thompson in Susquehanna County, Pennsylvania. To my knowledge there has never been a murderer who came from Thompson. Seven miles to the north on Route 171 is the town of Susquenhanna. A suburb called Great Bend, is
the spot where the Susqehanna River, originating in New York State, turns around on itself and heads back up to New York, only to turn back, merge with its western branch and empty further south into the Chesapeake Bay. James Michener in his novel Chesapeake, describes a fictious Native American, expelled from his tribe, who comes down the river and settles along the bay. A later chapter describes two explorers who go up the river, searching for its origin. They must choose at what is now the town of Sunburry, where the two branches merge, as to which branch to follow. Susquehanna is the birthplace of B. F. Skinner, who was during his life the foremost Anmerican psychologist, known for his studies of operant behavior in rats. Though Skinner did not treat patients, many of his students became clinicians and applied operant conditioning techniques in their work.

I owned eighteen acres along Route 171, north of Thompson and know the area well. I had a cabin built, doing some of the work myself, and used it for about fifteen years as a recreational property. I spent many happy hours exploring the countryside and meeting the people who live there. My favorite activity was to sit at the couter of one of the local diners and engage the person next to me in coversation. They were wary of talking with strangers but once I revealed that I owned land nearby they were comfortable talking to me. None of the people in my story a re mopdeled after anyone in Susquehanna County. One of these days I will donate a copy of my book to the library in Montrose, the County seat, where some of my story takes place. I also used the town of Honesdale, alomg Route 6 in Shrink. Thompson is between Montrose to the west and Honesdale to the east. I went to camp in the town of Lake Como, Pennsylvania,across the river on the New York side. not far from Hancock or Honesdale. A children's camp in the area also figures in my story.

I don't know if I will ever be sufficiently masochistic to write another novel. It's not the writing that deters me but the marketing. If I do become tempted my characters will be totally fictional.