Good Morning, Monster is a work of nonfiction by the clinical psychologist Catherine Gildiner, in which she profiles five individuals who, Gildiner asserts, are “psychological heroes.” Gildiner has worked with each patient as their therapist, seeing each one for a period of four to five years, and uses their cases as studies for her book’s exploration of the human capacity for resilience and survival.

Gildiner (born 1948) is a Canadian American clinical psychologist, therapist, and author. She holds a PhD in Psychology from the University of Toronto, with Charles Darwin’s influence on Freud as her dissertation topic. Gildiner pursued a career as a practicing therapist for many decades. She is also known for her three memoirs and a novel. Good Morning, Monster is her first publication in clinical psychology for a popular audience.

Good Morning, Monster profiles the lives of five patients—Laura, Peter, Danny, Alana, and Madeline—all of whom have endured traumatic experiences and have healed from them with clinical help. Gildiner has drawn from her extensive experience as a clinical professional and the numerous patients she has treated. Her book has maintained the confidentiality of her patients, modifying physical details or developing composite traits from other patients (“Catherine Gildiner Writes About Her Most Memorable Therapy Patients in Good Morning, Monster.” CBC: The Next Chapter, 24 July 2020). In each case study, Gildiner traces the impact trauma has had on the patient to illustrate how the patient embodies the qualities of a hero. Although their individual circumstances are unique, all of her patients are shown dealing with abuse or neglect by a parent, revealing the ways that childhood events and patterns have a lasting effect. Good Morning, Monster is at heart an optimistic book, showing the ways in which people can overcome traumatic experiences and achieve happier lives.

This guide references the 2020 paperback version by St. Martin’s. Citations refer to page numbers in this edition.

Content Warning: This guide and the source material deal closely with the theme of trauma. Both reference child abuse, substance misuse, verbal and physical abuse, sexual assault, rape, suicide, and suicidal ideation.

Summary

Psychologist Catherine Gildiner profiles five patients with whom she worked during her career as a therapist. Each of the patients, in Gildiner’s estimation, exhibits a psychological heroism in their healing from severe trauma. Gildiner’s book is written in the first person, framing the case studies inside her personal experience as a therapist. Gildiner presents each patient separately in turn and her book is split into five parts, one for each patient. For each patient, she establishes the inciting reason that brings them to therapy and then proceeds to present the patient’s family history. Following this, each section reads like a story of the patient’s presentation, therapy sessions, and progress, told from Gildiner’s perspective. At the end of each section, Gildiner describes why she deems this patient heroic and, in some instances, meets with the patient years after his or her therapy has concluded to gather their own assessment of their heroic qualities.

The first patient profiled, Laura Wilkes, was, Gildiner notes immediately, her first professional patient as a clinician. Initially, Laura is referred to Gildiner because she is upset and in pain from recurrent herpes outbreaks. She is angry at her boyfriend, Ed, who did not disclose his diagnosis to Laura and who passed it to her. In initial sessions, Gildiner leads Laura in identifying sources of stress in her life (since stress triggers the herpes outbreaks). It is through these exercises and her excavation of Laura’s family history that Gildiner learns of Laura’s traumatic childhood. Laura’s mother passed away of a cause never known to Laura when Laura was quite young. Soon after, her father left Laura and her two younger siblings at a cabin in the woods and did not return. Neglected, nine-year-old Laura was obliged to care for herself and her siblings and to navigate the stress of basic survival. Laura and her siblings were placed into foster care until Laura’s father returned years later and assumed custody of them again. Laura’s father was verbally abusive and manipulative toward Laura, and his criminal behavior and alcohol use disorder created an unsafe and chaotic environment for the children. He was convicted and imprisoned for periods of time and then returned. When Laura starts therapy, aged 26, her father is still an unreliable, disruptive, and abusive figure, but Laura is repeatedly drawn back to him. Her complicated feelings about him—coupled with her tendency to excuse or justify his neglect—now impacts her relationships with other men, in particular her boss and boyfriend. Her experiences also impact on her stress response and her methods of dealing with anxiety. In Laura’s story, Gildiner shows them working through the coping mechanisms and defenses that Laura has built up over the years, and the ways in which Laura is able to reassess her past experiences and process them in a way that helps her move forward.

The second patient is Peter Chang, a Chinese Canadian man referred to Gildiner by his urologist. Peter is impotent and no physical cause has been identified. Medication has made no difference and the medical doctor is certain that Peter’s physical problem must have a psychological cause. Gildiner uncovers a childhood history of abuse and neglect, although one that began earlier than Laura’s. At a very young age, Peter was locked in an attic while his mother worked to support the family. She was also verbally abusive toward him, and continues to be so in his adult life. As a result, Peter did not learn emotional attachment as a child with his mother. This means that he did not develop the means to feel safe emotional attachment to other people in his life and his ego protects itself from the risk physical intimacy through the means of impotence. Through his therapy, Peter and Gildiner explore both the cultural forces that shaped his mother’s notion of a good mother as well as the trauma she herself experienced that manifested itself in poor parenting. Gildiner helps Peter put boundaries in place in order to change his mother’s ongoing behavior toward him.

The third patient, Danny Morrison, is of Cree background. His boss, the owner of a trucking company, seeks out Gildiner’s help after Danny’s wife and daughter die in a car accident. The boss is concerned that Danny does not seem saddened by this loss and does not wish to take any time off from work to grieve. As an Indigenous person with traumatic experiences of authority, Danny is very wary of therapy, and he and Gildiner spend many of his initial sessions in silence before Danny is finally willing to talk. Gildiner learns that Danny was raised in a healthy, loving environment by kind and capable parents in a very remote part of northern Canada. Danny’s trauma began when he and his sister were forcefully placed in a residential school—a practice instituted in the 1960s by the Canadian government and intended to force assimilation of Indigenous people into white society. The children were not allowed to speak Cree and were physically abused when they expressed their culture in any way. Danny was also sexually abused by two priests at the school. Through the accumulation of this trauma, Danny learned to numb his emotions in order to cope with his experiences. As Danny becomes an adult, he has a problematic relationship with his family, influenced by his parents’ loss of their land, his father’s alcohol use disorder, and Danny’s alienation from his Cree heritage. Gildiner helps Danny to reidentify himself and his emotions and to explore his experiences, and the experiences of his family, in order to build empathetic relationships.

After Danny, Gildiner profiles Alana, whom she calls one of the most remarkable patients she has ever counseled. Alana is initially referred to Gildiner through another therapist who is working with Alana’s partner and has concerns about Alana. Aged 35, Alana has a successful career at a law firm but experiences physical signs of stress and panic: She gags and retches uncontrollably and also projectile vomits. Alana explains that the biggest initiator of these symptoms is the “tapes” of her father’s voice that play in her head. In therapy, Alana reveals that she has survived extreme abuse from her father in all forms throughout her life, including rape. This continued even when Alana lived with her paternal grandmother. Alana’s father, whom Alana refers to as Art, is an intelligent but “psychopathic sadist” who continues to diminish Alana as an adult. Alana’s view of herself and her own worth has been shaped by the long-term abuse of her father. Gildiner emphasizes the extreme nature of the abuse Alana endured so that Alana is able to reframe her experiences and sense of self. The behavior of Alana’s father has prevented Alana from developing in the ways that children and adolescents usually do within safe and healthy environments and Gildiner must help Alana to proceed through these stages of development retrospectively. As they progress, Gildiner diagnoses Alana with significant psychological disorders as a result of her trauma, and these diagnoses enable them to understand and work through Alana’s psychological responses to her past.

Gildiner’s fifth and final patient is a successful and wealthy antique dealer living in New York named Madeline Arlington. Madeline comes to be a patient by unconventional means: Gildiner has retired but is coaxed out of retirement and convinced to treat Madeline by her father, a former patient whom Gildiner counseled for only a short while. Madeline’s father, Duncan, is very wealthy and provides the means for Gildiner to travel from Toronto to Manhattan for weekly in-person sessions. Madeline is impacted by anxiety and obsessive thoughts, and her business is suffering because she has developed an acute and irrational fear of flying. Certain that the plane will crash, Madeline refuses to fly, nor will she allow any of her employees to fly—an essential element of the antiques business. As Gildiner addresses Madeline’s anxieties and obsessions, she discovers the way they are symptoms of the verbal abuse and neglect Madeline endured (and continues to endure) from her mother. Examining the ways her mother has shaped and harmed her become the focus of Gildiner’s time with Madeline.