God's Shrink has an intriguing title and is an absorbing and fascinating book; the unlikely scenario of a patient with possible psychotic tendency who claims to be God, can only stimulate our imagination and curiosity. We are drawn in by the superior intellect of the individual...regardless if he is God or not. His words are empowering and comforting. According to this God we are expected to solve our own problems; after all we have been given brains, and not collective ones, and we should be ready to use them without his help. We are not puppets, and he will not be pulling the strings. This God is very much like loving parents, who comfort us with their support and care but cannot live our life for us.
Particularly moving is Richard's return to his roots; the visit to his grandparents Oma and Opa's house and cemetery plot. I found this passage of the book very emotionally charged, because it brought me back to my own childhood, reconnecting me to family members that have since passed on. I was overwhelmed by emotions, and a flood of cleansing tears streamed down my face. I remembered how much their wisdom and love was instrumental in shaping my character, and helped me in the darkest moments of my life.
God's Shrink is a wonderful book that takes its reader on an emotional journey, based on individual beliefs in God. I found the experience beneficial, and will encourage family and friends to read the book.
Does God need to vent? Does he get stressed? Does he ever take a moment to just stop and pull himself together and decompress? God's Shrink is a book about the possibility of what could happen if The Supreme Being ever thought he needed to talk about his feelings to a mental health professional. The man he picks is Dr. Richard Johnson.
As extraordinary as it would seem to have God walk into a psychiatrist's office and state he has to `vent', Dr. Adamse handles the situation convincingly. Even after several displays of unexplainable feats (speaking foreign languages on demand, reading thoughts, describing the Doctor's morning routine) Richard is still struggling with figuring out exactly how Gabriel's psychosis is structured. It may seem clich?d to us as readers, knowing (or more accurately, assuming) that he actually is talking to God, but in a realistic setting the good Doctor just can't seem to wrap his mind around the possibility. The dichotomy of actually believing in God but not being able to believe you may be in his presence despite the evidence is a tricky subject to traverse. Adamse delves into his own knowledge of psychology, describing to us many technical details of the process and letting us know just how complex the therapy of dealing with a psychosis can be. There is a possibility of one being lost in the subject matter at these points but they don't last long and they are not germane to understanding the story.
As for the plot, Gabriel seems well adjusted and baffles Richard with many of his thoughts and feelings. The things he discusses can easily be coming from a very sane, very concerned person who just wants people to use their free will more than anything else to make the world a better place. The genius in the patient's motives is that he doesn't say it straight forward. Gabriel simply states the obvious in how the world works; things are in motion. He doesn't have control. We are not puppets. As God, he has set things on course and is somewhat disappointed in how they are progressing. Schlepping through this subject matter could easily be full of landmines to controversial damnation, but Adamse seems to have found graceful ways to get this across without (at least as far as I can tell) being insulting to anyone's religion. Of course with Gabriel saying things like `Who says I'm the only God' and making a point of every religion having a different name for him is most likely going to offend SOMEBODY.
There is a saying that the greatest tragedy of Religion is that there are too many names for God. But a simple notation to the fact that God represents himself to Richard as `God' and not Allah, or Buddha or Jehovah can be chalked up to the fact that the Doctor grew up with and has faith in Christianity. Just like many people, Gabriel wants to make himself as available as possible to the person he has chosen to open up to. If the Doctor was of another religion, he might very well have used a different name.
In the end, Dr Adamse makes a great ploy to ask yourself...did this really happen? Was this a real patient? If so, was he God? Or is this just the fictional fantasy depiction of what Dr Adamse would consider his dream patient? Either case, it's a brilliant plant of a seed in the reader's mind. Many questions are asked and many could be discussed in different ways with no clear cut answer simply due to everyone's varied beliefs in God. But the message is clear for the most part...we need to be better humans.
