Jonathan Kellerman
Jonathan Kellerman was born in New York City in 1949 and grew up in Los Angeles. He helped work his way through UCLA as an editorial cartoonist, columnist, editor and freelance musician. As a senior, at the age of 22, he won a Samuel Goldwyn Writing Award for fiction.
Like his fictional protagonist, Alex Delaware, Jonathan received at Ph.D. in psychology at the age of 24, with a specialty in the treatment of children. He served internships in clinical psychology and pediatric psychology at Childrens Hospital of Los Angeles and was a post-doctoral HEW Fellow in Psychology and Human Development at CHLA.
IN 1975, Jonathan was asked by the hospital to conduct research into the psychological effects of extreme isolation (plastic bubble units) on children with cancer, and to coordinate care for these kids and their families. The success of that venture led to the establishment, in 1977 of the Psychosocial Program, Division of Oncology, the first comprehensive approach to the emotional aspects of pediatric cancer anywhere in the world. Jonathan was asked to be founding director and, along with his team, published extensively in the area of behavioral medicine. Decades later, the program, under the tutelage of one of Jonathan's former students, continues to break ground.
Jonathan's first published book was a medical text, PSYCHOLOGICAL ASPECTS OF CHILDHOOD CANCER, 1980. One year later, came a book for parents, HELPING THE FEARFUL CHILD.
In 1985, Jonathan's first novel, WHEN THE BOUGH BREAKS, was published to enormous critical and commercial success and became a New York Times bestseller. BOUGH was also produced as a t.v. movie and won the Edgar Allan Poe and Anthony Boucher Awards for Best First Novel. Since then, Jonathan has published a best-selling crime novel every year, and occasionally, two a year. In addition, he has written and illustrated two books for children and a nonfiction volume on childhood violence, SAVAGE SPAWN (1999.) Though no longer active as a psychotherapist, he is a Clinical Professor of Pediatrics and Psychology at University of Southern California Keck School of Medicine.
Jonathan is married to bestselling novelist Faye Kellerman and they have four children.
“Assholes are like weeds, a bitch to get rid of and when you do another one grows back in its place.”
“Through the anger came something I recognized; the sadness that can result from too many years absorbing the poison of others. - Alex Delaware on Dr. Lehmann”
“I saw this cartoon in the paper, once. That Viking, Hagar the Horrible? He’s standing on the mountaintop, holding his hands to the heavens, shouting “Why me?” And down from the heavens comes the answer: “Why not?” Maybe that’s the ultimate truth; what right to do I have to expect a smooth ride?”
“Maybe we're just prisoners of our biology.”
“Siblings are thrown together by chance. Anything from love to hate can follow.”
“Pessimism is not good for the soul.""I sold my soul years ago.""To whom?""The bitch goddess Success. She cut town before paying off.”
“Too many cases thrown out of court, too much pop-psycho crap, satanic bullshit... if you FEEL you've been abused, you HAVE been!”
“If you ask me, psychopaths are more talented than the rest of us... but they're still fucking psychopaths.”
“Nice concept.-What is?-Retreating. Getting away from the grind.-Oh, you never do. You just change gears.”
“It was shaping up as a beautiful morning. The last thing I wanted to hear about was murder.”
“Maybe still waters did run deep. Or God on your side was the ultimate soul balm.”
“Revenge was a dish best eaten cold, but eight years between was arctic.”
“Her basic disposition was a good deal sunnier than mine. But I was a better faker.”
“The stress of grad school can drive anyone temporarily mad.”
“Therapist’s dilemma: those who need help the most, run the farthest from it.”
“Sleep. The ultimate resistance”
“All of us are like locks. No matter how strong the bolt, there’s always a key out there that opens it.”
“Just because others have it worse doesn’t mean you have to suffer in silence.”
“Optimism is denial for chumps with no life experience"."What's pessimism?" I said."Religion without God.”
“I'd long thought that a surfeit of sensitivity could be a killing thing, too much insight malignant in its own right. The best survivors--there are studies that show it--are those blessed with an inordinate ability to deny. And keep on marching.”
“a Jew had to have two synagogues. One that he went to, one that he rejected.”
“The key to excellent report writing' he said between chews, 'is to take every bit of passion out of it. Use an extra heaping portion of superflously extraneous tautological redundancies in order to make it mind-numbingly boring. So that when one's superior officers read it, they zone out and start skimming and maybe don't notice the fact that one has been spinning one's wheels since the body turned up and hasn't solved a goddamn thing.”
“Creighton tried to smile again. The result fit him like panty hose on a mastiff.”
“The science of psychotherapy is knowing what to say, the art is knowing when to say it. (36)”
“Life is like a prism. What you see depends on how you turn the glass.”
“A good chunk of my life had been spent sorting out the scrambled communications, festering hostilities, and frozen affections that characterized families in turmoil. (257)”
“To trust someone is to take the greatest risk of all. (180)”
“I'd been trained in the art of psychotherapy, the excavation of the past as a means of untangling the present and rendering it livable. It's detective work, of sorts, crouching stealthily in the blind alleys of the unconscious. (179)”
“His experience and training should have taught him that families are the cauldrons in which violence is brewed. (144)”