A controversial therapist. The reliability of memory. Taking psychological crimes to court. The hooks in Philippa Malicka’s debut novel In Her Defense were the perfect shape and size for this crime fiction therapist, dear readers!
The story follows troubled artist Gus Bird and her role in an unfolding court battle: an unorthodox therapist sues her young patient’s celebrity mother for libel, for denouncing the therapist online as “a modern-day cult leader” who “creates false memories in the minds of those she coaches.” Gus’s connections to the people and the case unspool in breath-catching bits of the present and the past.
While reading, I was swept up in Gus’s personal experience of desolation and longing, which ties to the allegations of cult-style interpersonal control in the novel. (No spoilers!) It’s a tale of emotional addiction, born of terrible loneliness and insecurity, to other human beings.
Attachment and addiction are very different things, and the novel depicts addiction hallmarks (craving, compulsion, withdrawal, secrecy, shame) that can be just as destructive in dealings with risky humans as with risky substances. Emotional addiction is a powerful driver for character and plot development, and a great lens to consider as a reader and/or a writer.
The recipe for the kind of emotional addiction (and subsequent brainwashing) that builds cult followings has been well-documented in real-world research. I’ll boil it down to these main ingredients, with some help from Google Gemini:
- Behavioral control: keep you busy, keep you tired, reward “good” and punish “bad” behaviors
- Mind control: cut you off from other sources of information, manipulate you with lies, foster total agreement and allegiance, make you suspicious of others
- Emotional control: love-bombing paired with guilt-tripping, undermining your confidence to exist without them
If I were writing a novel about someone wanting to control others through largely psychological means, this would be my playbook. And Malicka’s portrayal brings the pages of that playbook to vivid, excruciating life.
The personal struggles in the novel were gripping, and there was still room to get invested in the buildup to the legal outcome of the case. For the libel charge against the mother to be dropped, defense had to prove the therapist was truly abusing her patient by mind control, through the creation and reinforcement of false memories. If it had actually happened, there would be nothing libelous in the mother posting about online.
Another credit to Malicka – there is enough complexity to the case and the characters involved to make the outcome worthy of internal and external debate. Whether you’re looking for a compelling night-in read or your next book club pick, you may want to take a look!
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