Suzanne Gold, author of the moving new book, Daddy's Girls, has varied interests. She received her BA and MA degrees in psychology from Temple University in Philadelphia. She's written two mysteries ("Kaaterskill" and "Cuckoo's Nest") and a self-help book called "Being Yourself: Twenty-Four Ways to See the Light." She's worked as a therapist, educator, singer/songwriter, activist and artisan. She currently lives in Northern California, where we caught up with her to talk about Daddy's Girls.

BB:Writer, psychologist, educator, singer/songwriter, artisan: You've done it all! Do you have a favorite occupation?
      SG: Each occupation was my favorite while I was doing it, and now writing is my favorite. So is promoting Daddy's Girls which is my primary job at the moment. 
        While I was doing psychology, I was inspired by discovering patterns and perspective and transformation. The thrill of therapy was helping someone do the work they need to change right before my very eyes. As a teacher, the reward was almost the same. I taught spiritual philosophy and esoteric techniques at the same time I was studying myself, and was inspired to witness teachers and students alike deepening and realizing new possibilities and contentment we never suspected. While performing as a vocalist, I combined the passion of music with the joy of creating an atmosphere in which people could celebrate and enjoy themselves. As an artisan, I loved arranging unlikely materials until I felt an intuitive certainty that it was art. As a writer, all those experiences come together-- discovery, transformation, depth, possibility, passion, celebration, and intuition-- in my story. 
BB: You now live in California. Your psychology degrees are from Temple University in Philadelphia. Where did you spend your formative years?
     SG: I was born and raised in northwestern Philadelphia -- Mt. Airy, Chestnut Hill, West Oak Lane and Germantown. I went to a magnet high school for "academically talented young women" from all over the city and spent a year at Albright College in Reading before getting my Bachelor's and Master's degrees in Clinical Psychology from Temple, and my initial professional experience and training as a psychologist and therapist. As I began my odyssey of self- discovery, I felt too limited by the setting of my unhappy youth. At 25, I left Philadelphia and never looked back. I spent the next two years in New York and Boston, before heading for a new life in California, where I finally feel at home.
BB: Your resume includes time spent as a therapist/psychologist at a state mental hospital. What is your opinion of the state of mental health care facilities/treatment in this country?
     SG: In theory, I'm very supportive of the mental health system. Those who can't care for themselves because they're too preoccupied with their personal demons need somewhere to go to be cared for. Unfortunately, there is too little money, too few therapeutic facilities, and far too little treatment that honors the process enough to attract people to doing it. Although our existing system doesn't provide the most adequate or appropriate care, the issue is complex. Because insanity may have various contributing causes--heredity, environment, or brain chemistry--there seems to be no reliable way to determine which is operative in a particular case and how to treat it.
      One of the hot buttons in the treatment of the mentally ill involves involuntary commitment. In some states, anyone who is a danger to himself or others can be involuntarily committed. To me, it makes compassionate sense when, for example, a paranoid who refuses to eat for fear of being poisoned is starving himself to death. Some people believe involuntary commitment violates constitutional rights, but I disagree. A dead person has no civil rights to enforce. My sister is schizophrenic, unable to care for herself, and a resident of a psychiatric group home. Left on her own, she would wander the streets, picking up strange men and having sex with them. Our mother and I agreed that this constituted endangerment and allowed her commitment to proceed without protest.
     The sad plight of the mentally ill in our country stems from denial. No one really knows what makes people go crazy, and it frightens us. We don't understand it, and don't want to confront the issue, or even have the mentally ill living in our neighborhoods, because we don't want to realize that it can happen to anyone, even us. 
BB: Your wonderful new book "Daddy's Girls" is the story of two girls--Allison and Cherie-- growing up in a very dysfunctional family. How did the family's dysfunction affect the girls?
     SG: In any interaction, there are different levels of forces at work. Allison and Cherie are shaped by their dysfunctional family, and at the same time help shape it by their reactions to it. Both feel alienated, but respond to it differently. Allison becomes introverted and insecure at a very early age because of her fear that she will be caught in the crossfire of her parents' volatile relationship. Cherie becomes frustrated and angry and retaliates by giving back more than she gets.As it is in all our lives, the patterns of dysfunction are a perfect fit with the lessons each person in the family has come together with the others to learn. 
BB: Your sister struggles with mental illness. Do her battles mirror those of Cherie?
     SG: Cherie is an amalgam of traits and situations experienced by my sister, myself, clients I've worked with and other people I've known, heard or read about. (Isn't this what all writers say?) The framework of the story is similar to what went on in our family, and the emotional tone is accurate as I remember it. But all the details are fictional and almost nothing actually happened as I tell it in the book. Many of the Allison parts reflect my own life, since she's in my position in the family. Some of the Ruth and Cherie scenes are mine as well, and some are loosely based on the lives of my sister and mother, but most are completely invented to develop the character or atmosphere. Rather than recounting the factual truth, I've tried to share the insight and compassion gathered from my sister's schizophrenia and my own work as a therapist to offer an interpretation of mental illness which comforts me and which I hope will comfort others as well.
BB: You're donating a portion of the proceeds from Daddy's Girls to a fund you've established to help the mentally ill. Tell us about the programs you're funding.
     SG: The fund is still too young to make any grants, but I hope to be able to offer situational financial assistance for needs not covered by treatment or insurance. I plan to focus on practical matters that help with reintegrating into society, like clothes for a job interview, or tuition for skill development. I want to collaborate with service agencies who can recommend candidates and provide follow-up. I'd like to help mitigate the stigma of being mentally ill and the grief and guilt of their families by emphasizing the metaphysical aspects. 
BB: Your take on mental illness is not mainstream. Can you share some of your theories with our readers?
     SG: On the surface, the events in Daddy's Girls may seem unremarkable, belying the incipient psychosis, and in a sense they are. There's a fine line between sanity and insanity, a running monologue (or dialogue or however-many) in everyone's mind constantly. The content is mostly automatic stuff accumulated throughout a lifetime of trying to cope with everybody else's stuff. Judging, interpreting, lusting, plotting, regretting, etc., are only interpretations layered on top of pure living and feeling. In that sense, we're all crazy. But we're all sane too. Because at the core, our idiosyncrasies reflect our spiritual mission, and what we create and learn in our unique lives enriches the ground of being. 
     What drives people crazy is a fascinating question. According to the Surgeon General, one in five Americans will suffer from some form of mental illness in their lifetime. And each has a family affected by their illness, like mine was. People with mental illness are stigmatized, mostly because we're all afraid of how easily it might happen to anyone under the right circumstances. 
     Traditional treatment focuses on causes, which aren't certain, and cures, which aren't reliable. It ignores the issue of spiritual purpose, which I feel is the bottom line in all the circumstances of our lives. If we consider that everything that happens to us has the potential to teach us essential lessons in living, then even mental illness can be seen as having dignity. Experience is the teacher, no matter the specifics. Each of us is born with an innate sense of why we're here. Our greatest challenge is to realize the meaning of our lives, and our circumstances are tailor-made to reflect it.
     There are no "good" or "bad" experiences. Difficult situations force us deep enough to touch spirit and learn what it takes to have a fruitful life. When we bring our inner processes to light, we can come to terms with and transform them. In searching for meaning in the tragic, we can tap into deeper levels of perception that transform our vision of life. If we open to our psyches as the ground where spirit and personality meet, we can expand our capacity for love and peace of mind. Mental illness can teach us to deal with our fear and guilt, and to consider life a metaphor for the lessons we need to learn, which can make a difference to us personally and to society as a whole.
     I think of mental illness not as a qualitatively different state of mind, but as a variation in the degree of repression or expression of qualities we all have. It's part of human nature, which contains and reflects all possibilities. "Sanity" and "madness" are like different points on the same continuum, more a sphere than a straight line, around which our psyches bounce almost imperceptibly in every moment. The difference between "us" and "them" is in how well we stay balanced in stressful situations without denying the truth of our emotional experience. That is life's ultimate challenge. Those who "drive us crazy" actually show us how to get sane, in that whatever attracts or upsets us shows us what direction to explore to clarify our mission. 
     The course of family life touches our hearts and strengthens our resilience like nothing else, as we play out issues we understand at a metaphysical level even as they overwhelm and confuse us in our normal operations. Although everybody in a family (or "karass," as Kurt Vonnegut calls our larger group of significant others) participates in the development of the identified patient's personality and illness--it's nobody's fault. The factors that cause insanity are bigger than individual responsibility. The best we can do is be honest and intend to love. 
     If we consider the mentally ill as examples of the wrath of God and avoid them lest it happen to us, we wish they would fade away and not put the questions of sanity in our faces. If we treat them as the canaries in the mine who show us what can happen when we don't or can't manage our experience in a productive way, we can see them as a stimulus to find how to fulfill ourselves and our obligations to one another. It's a sorry society that does not care for its most vulnerable members. 
BB: I think your book is one of the best 'interior' books I've read since Michael Cunningham's The Hours. How has the book been received?
     SG: Extremely well. Many readers say, as you did, how compelling the story is and how difficult to put down. The book launch party at Book Passage in Corte Madera, CA (my local independent bookstore and the first to carry the book) brought together over 70 people. Twenty-seven books were sold on that day alone, and over forty-five books in a little more than a month. One of the most interesting and gratifying responses from readers is when they confide in me about mental illness in their own families. In this way, together, we bring it out of the darkness of blame and shame into the light of exploration. I see this as my greatest gift, both to and from my audience.
BB: Any plans for a sequel?
     SG: I've already started a file. In the sequel, I'd like to have Cherie recover, and relapse, and recover again, and in the process to learn about the nature of sanity and insanity and how to stay balanced and cope with the reality of daily life. I want Allison to discover how to have meaningful relationships, and especially an intimate relationship with a man. That man will be the third viewpoint character, and I'll examine his internal struggle and the interplay between mental illness and creativity. It will be an interesting challenge for me to create a realistic male point of view. 
BB: This book has Academy Award written all over the three female characters' roles. Has there been any interest from Hollywood?
     SG: Again, it's early days yet. But I hope you're right about the Oscars. I do think the parts could be fun for the actors to play. The closest I've come so far is less than six degrees of separation. My cousin, a surgery resident in Philadelphia, is supervised by the father of M. Night Shyamalan, who made the wonderful film, "The Sixth Sense." My cousin gave the manuscript to the father, who said he would pass it along to his son. No action on that front yet, though.
BB: What are you working on now?
     SG: I'm mostly working on promoting Daddy's Girls, but also on small pieces, short stories and essays, while I keep adding to the file for the D'sGs sequel and waiting until the moment when it announces to me that it's ready to be taken seriously. In additon, I'm working on a proposal for a book based on my article "Ten Ways to Survive a Dysfunctional Family." 
BB: Thanks for stopping by to visit with us. Good luck!