I describe a group of unique individuals I worked with in psychotherapy or encountered in my clinical work. Their stories are interesting and poignant but the characteristic most striking about them was their resilience. It was so necessary for success in their/our hard work of psychotherapy. I chose them to write about because of my admiration for their candor and resilience. None of them were severely psychotic or psychopathic. However, they all had significant issues and conflicts necessary to master in- order- to move forward with success in their lives. Each therapy involved my patients' families in various and significant ways. Though cooperation by families was often important, it was not always possible or imperative for a positive therapy result. I have carefully made efforts to protect the confidentiality of my patients. This involved disguising places, names and some events. However, I think the essence of their life story and therapy process has been maintained. The form I use is the short story. I have sought concision in the stories. I have sometimes condensed time periods and intervals by editing- out descriptions of lengthy periods involving the fallowing of insights obtained, and the gradual working through of an insight or domain of mindfulness. I sometimes emphasize dramatic and important psychotherapy events by exact dialogue and descriptions. I hope these convey the essence of important psychotherapy work. At the end of each chapter I will describe what I learned from each psychotherapy process. Unlike many melodramatic Hollywood movie scenarios about psychotherapy, changes occurring in psychotherapy are often deceptively quiet...often muted. Psychotherapy involves many emotional experiences...anxiety, fear, fascination, wonder, boredom, humor/laughter, anger, sadness and often pain. The more severe and ominous forms of pain, destruction, and even a death prevented, go unheralded. They are unnoticed because existentially they like a suicide prevented, never in fact exist or occur.
About the Author: After attending Wheaton College, Olsson trained at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, Texas. After an internship in mixed medicine at the University of Vermont, Dr. Olsson took a psychiatry residency at Baylor (1968-1971). He served as a psychiatrist at Oakland Naval Hospital from 1971-73 running the substance abuse unit and working with the POWs returning from Vietnam prisons. Olsson later graduated from the Houston-Galveston Psychoanalytic Institute in Houston .and practiced psychiatry and psychotherapy while teaching psychotherapy in Houston for 25 years... and subsequently in New Hampshire since 1995. Olsson was an assistant professor of psychiatry at Dartmouth Med School and is an adjunct professor of clinical psychiatry at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston. In his introduction to MALIGNANT PIED PIPERS OF OUR TIME, Olsson describes what drew his personal and professional interest to destructive cult leaders. Olsson received the Judith Baskin Offer Prize in 1980 for his paper, "Adolescent involvement in Cults and the Supernatural". Dr. Olsson is a Fellow of the American Academy of Psychoanalysis and a distinguished life fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. He retired from active clinical work to write full time in September 2011. Published Books: MALIGNANT PIED PIPERS OF OUR TIME: From the Rev Jim Jones to Osama Bin Laden. Publish America, Baltimore, (2005); The CULT OF OSAMA: Psychoanalyzing Bin Laden and His Magnetism For Muslim Youths. Praeger Security International of Greenwood Group, Westport, Connecticut. London (2007). THE MAKING OF A HOMEGROWN TERRORIST. ABC-CLIO, Praeger, Santa Barbara (2014), WINNER 2015 Beverly Hills Book Awards for new non-fiction. A PSYCHOTHERAPIST'S SANCTUARIES FROM SOUL-SADNESS. SBPRA, Houston, (2017). MALIGNANT PIED PIPERS: A Psychological Study of Destructive Cult Leaders. Second Edition(2017), Strategic Book Publishing and Rights Co. Houston. COUNTERFEIT GODS (2017) Create Space of Amazon.com. A first novel is called A BOYISH GOD. SBPRA, Houston, (2013). A second novel is called HOUSTON'S HOMEGROWN TERROR. SBPRA, Houston, (2014). And a poem collection, Poems Behind a Psychiatrists Couch: Red Lead Press, Pittsburgh. THE BIG BANG TRILOGY: A Political Theological Fantasy (2017) Create Space of Amazon.com For additional publications see Olsson website. www.drpeterolsson.com