'Trauma' author delves into the psyche

Patrick McGrath was born and bred an Englishman, but since 1971 he has written from the United States. He writes beautiful novels and short stories that often focus on psychologists and therapy.

Two of his previous novels are "Asylum" and "Spider." His new one, "Trauma," is a carefully crafted story centered on a therapist.

"I grew up in a psychiatric household. We were even near a mental hospital," said McGrath by phone from his New York City home. "My father was a psychiatrist. My interests quite naturally gravitated toward problems of mental illness, trauma and psychosis. I read widely in the field."

But his education at Simon Fraser University prepared him to teach kindergarten in Vancouver. "I had 20 very energetic little kids, and it was very difficult for me to maintain discipline in my classroom. That caused me to leave teaching."

He studied American literature at the University of London and became a fiction writer. "If I were to live my life over again," said McGrath, "I would seriously consider being a psychiatrist, because I think they do intensely valuable work."

The protagonist of "Trauma" is Charlie Weir, a Manhattan psychiatrist who counsels traumatized war veterans who have recently returned home from serving in Vietnam, especially those suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder.

Charlie possesses that rare quality of serenity that allows him to connect with his patients. But he has trouble connecting emotionally with the women in his own life. He also carries serious baggage in the hostile relationship he has with his older brother. When he discovers that the woman he is involved with is having an affair with his brother, he explodes.

Although Charlie is very good in counseling others, he has trouble applying the principles to himself, and he chooses not to go into therapy with another psychiatrist. The physician "cannot heal himself."

In McGrath's words, "Charlie has been deeply traumatized, but the nature of that trauma is hidden, repressed, hard to get at. He has profoundly painful memories, and his mind refuses to confront them."

To learn more about trauma, McGrath studied Judith Herman's "standard work" called "Trauma and Recovery." "I didn't appropriate the actual cases cited in her book, but I got the idea of the sorts of problems that occur with traumatized patients and how good psychiatrists deal with it. Then I invented my own case histories."

As a writer, McGrath takes ordinary problems and "ratchets them up to depict experience as crisis. Everything becomes more dramatic. The worst always tends to happen. By and large real life doesn't rise to such intensity," said McGrath.

Part of the problem in McGrath's story line is the younger brother competing with the older brother, "who seems to get everything. Charlie, in this case, is dealing with his demons. He even entertains thoughts of suicide."

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