Any doubt that seeking therapy is courageous will be put to rest by the patient profiles detailed in Good Morning, Monster. Catherine Gildiner is a clinical psychologist and author of a trilogy of memoirs (including Coming Ashore). As pseudo-memoirist for five of her most layered and poignant clients, Gildiner clearly demonstrates the value of analysis, the resilience of the human spirit and the vast generosity of sharing one's life story.
The patients vary in culture, socio-economic background and temperament. Within their treatments, Gildiner highlights tools available to clinicians to facilitate acknowledgment and change. Despite these interesting instructive moments, Good Morning, Monster is not aimed at academics; rather, it provides a window for the lay person to bear witness to the most intimate of processes.
The levels of despair and dreadfulness underlying each of the five stories can't be overstated. There is abuse, violence and neglect of every gradient. But there is also growth, buoyancy and wonderful wit and humor ("Laura" on intimacy: "Christ! Why not just dance naked in the streets?").
Gildiner is a talented narrator and admirably summarizes years of sessions without the accounts feeling choppy or incomplete. She's also wonderfully frank about her own mistakes and misreads as a psychologist, and she is quick to seek outside guidance when beneficial (finding cultural resources to aid a Cree man, for example). With hard work, each client reckons with the demons they wake with each morning, even when they've been told they themselves are the monster. --Lauren O'Brien of Malcolm Avenue Review