Part 2 Melanie Wells Revisited - A Peek Into the Mind

A native of the Texas panhandle, Wells is a licensed psychotherapist, business owner, musician and author of the critically-acclaimed Dylan Foster psychological thrillers.

Visit Melanie here and read Part One of her interview here.

With your psychology background and clinical experience you've likely heard and seen it all. Tell us...what is the most fascinating aspect of the human mind?

I'm always stunned by the extremes at both ends. I look at people who have survived severe trauma and yet manage to make a life for themselves and find some serenity and peace in the world. I read a story in the news several months ago about an African woman whose lips and ears had been cut off by her captors – guerillas in a civil war. There was a picture of her - she's disfigured for life. She can't even cover her teeth. And yet the entire article was about her belief that without forgiveness, her nation could not move forward. She held no bitterness toward the people who had done this to her.

Contrast that with John William King – the narcissist, sociopathic ringleader of the yahoos who chained James Byrd to the back of their pickup in Jasper, Texas and dragged him to death. I can’t even think about that. Honestly, I don’t know how God stands us sometimes.

Abnormal psychology is the stuff of creepy villains. What psychological aspects/qualities can writers layer into characters showing a resilient person who deals with a horrible past, and then the reverse, a character who is devastated by their past, and leaves behind them a wake of destruction?

Complexity is the key to great characters. Everyone is multi-dimensional. Even the sickos (that’s a medical term – you may not be aware). In my books, Gordon Pryne is a perfect example. You find out somewhere along the way that he’s got a mother. And it gives you pause. Of course he has a mother, you think. But how did he go from being her sweet newborn to being the twisted serial offender he’s become by the time we meet him?

I think the fork in the road has to do with conscience and empathy. I read a book once called Why They Kill. It was about serial murderers (light reading – great for nighttime!) The key to their development into serial offenders is that they get away with it. One success – bullying on the playground – leads to another. They’re snatching bikes or shoplifting, with little concern for the consequences. And then they get in a bar fight and use a pool cue to win. And so on. The more “success” they have with violence, the more they tend to rely on it to give them power. And eventually it becomes their only currency for functioning in the world.

At the other end, you have someone who, when they see a person or an animal suffer, for example, can’t get the image out of their head. They have empathy, compassion. We all have capacity to hurt one another. But somewhere deep inside the complexity of the human mind and soul, there’s a difference between a person who turns his anger outward and becomes violent and a woman I know, for example, who was raped at age 5 and can’t watch news about crimes against children without crying.

What traumas can cause the human mind to distort, and how can a writer set up a backstory that makes for a believable psychological meltdown with a broken character who retains some sympathetic characteristics?

Trauma (violence or sexual assault) always leave a terrible wake behind them. Post traumatic stress disorder can be boiled down to a simple concept – a person who has been traumatized will often continue to act as though they’re in danger, even when the danger is long gone. The classic example is helicopters. People who have spent time in war zones often feel deep anxiety and duck their heads when they hear a helicopter. Because in war, helicopters are most often associated with gunshots – either they’re doing the shooting or they’re coming in to get the wounded. If you’re sitting at a Starbucks in Dallas and hear a helicopter, you’re in more danger from the traffic it’s monitoring than from the copter itself. But the reaction is primal, involuntary. It can’t be gotten out of your system.

So that could be a cool way to build a character – to have them respond in some unexpected way to a normal event and then weave the story around until it explains itself. I just gave away a great idea. That’ll be $12.99 (the cost of my latest book).

In your experience, have you seen real proof of the "New Creature" and the mind of Christ in people who submit to Christ? Give an example or two.

Sure. I see tons of evidence of the new creature, but it’s always arm-wrestling with the old nature (anyone read Romans 7 lately?). This is one of my pet peeves about Christians, frankly. They forget that people are constantly waging that battle. They expect to see victory. Now. They completely forget about the complexity of life and the element of time. My friend who was raped at age 5 may never be able to have a successful intimate relationship. She was horribly brutalized for years and she lives in a fallen world. Things are not easy for her. Christ never says he’ll eliminate our pain or protect us from it. He just says he’ll use it. I’ve always thought it interesting that He still had His wounds after the resurrection. That’s how important wounds are.

What realistic psychological details can a writer infuse into a character who transforms or changes radically?

I’m not sure people change radically. I guess some do. Anyone who does prison ministry can tell you some amazing stories. But plenty of those stories have new endings – complicated ones – when the felon walks out of jail and can’t get a job or finds himself an outcast among family and no longer belongs with his old friends. I have a friend who has a terrible past dealing drugs, pimping prostitutes and who knows what else. He spent some time in prison. Then he read the Bible and turned his life around and now he’s got four kids and is married to an amazing woman and is leading a productive life. But he has secret struggles no one knows about. He’s like the rest of us. We’re all like onions. You peel us and there are lots of layers.

Good fiction always shows the layers.