The Website of Dr. Mark Goulston

Author of The Month: Dr. Mark Goulston
first seen at BASILANDSPICE

Sep 2, 2008

Dr. Goulston, you are a prolific writer, the envy of many. What drives you to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard?

If you want the real reason, it’s because I listen much more to patients, clients and family than they listen to me. I have discovered that it is less important what you tell people you care about than what you enable them to tell and ask you. As I listen I am inspired by the trust and confidence people have in me to come up with solutions for them, but usually what they want most is to be listened to, feel understood by someone and feel understandable to themselves. I also have written in a journal since the first day I finished my medical internship thirty two years ago and now have 186 volumes. I was never a very good writer or good in English in high school, as a pre-med and then as a medical student, but continuing to write has helped me become clearer, more articulate and better able to communicate and help others. In 40,000+ pages of journal entries you will find the rough drafts of my five books, 350 published articles, syndicated columns and blogs. Clearly there is a lot leftover.

How has your childhood influenced who you are today?

I think my parents did the best they could and were good at problem solving, but I never felt understood by anyone and over the years ached to be. It has taught me that there is a huge difference between being a “human doing” and a “human being.” Solutions help you more at doing; understanding helps you more at being.

Who has been your greatest mentor in life?

I have been fortunate to have several including Dr. William McNary, Dean of Students, Boston University School of Medicine who believed in me when I didn’t, who stood up for me when I couldn’t, and who taught me never to give up on people. Next Dr. Edwin Shneidman, perhaps the greatest living authority on suicide, also taught me that when you listen for the hurt in people, it comes out like pus from a wound and then the healing begins. He also taught me that “having horror heard helps heal hurt.” Then Albert Doskind, a key executive under Lew Wasserman at MCA-Universal and responsible for starting the Universal City Tour and after than Universal City Walk helped me realize that the most important gift you can give your children is to educate them (and because of largely my wife’s effort, and of course my children’s, I now have bragging rights over the education and then college education my children have received). Over the past several years I have been deeply honored to be mentored by Warren Bennis, the foremost authority on leadership in the world. Every time I am with Warren I try to absorb into my DNA his smartness, brightness, kindness, wisdom and charm (something he has in spades that I will never possess). What I have learned most from Warren who is one of the most interesting people you could ever meet is that it is far better to be interested than interesting.

During your training of FBI and police hostage negotiators, what incident stands out in your mind?

Helping hostage negotiators learn to save as many lives through the use of empathy as with a technical strategy has happened over and over. One slightly odd incident however that comes to mind was an introduction that Sheriff Sherman Block gave to begin a training day saying “That rumors of my demise have been greatly exaggerated.” He died a week later.

What has been your greatest success in life?

For many years I had a psychiatric practice largely populated by suicidal patients who had made multiple attempts prior to seeing me. None of them killed themselves and I rarely if ever hospitalized any of them. One patient said to me: “That you stopped me from killing myself was not the miracle you performed; it’s that you helped me reach the place where I wanted to live.”

Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) is often on your mind. Why?

I wrote PTSD for Dummies last year and with its publication reawakened my compassion and sadness for people psychologically imprisoned by it. I especially feel for returning soldiers and veterans, policemen and firemen who have sacrificed so much to protect and defend the rest of us from harm and who because of PTSD may never know the peace of mind that they richly deserve. I even start to cry now as I write this.

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