Gillian McCain told me, “If I wasn’t an author, I think I’d want to be a therapist.”
Should she choose to switch fields, McCain is off to a good start. Because with the book “Please Kill Me,” an oral history of the development of punk rock music, McCain and co-author Legs McNeil have delivered to their readers one of the most important ingredients of effective therapy — unconditional positive regard.
Published in 1996, at a time when much of the world had long overlooked or forgotten punk rock music and culture, “Please Kill Me” tells the story of New York City’s underground punk rock scene of the late ’60s and early ’70s. True to the punk rock tradition of confronting the mainstream, McCain and McNeil presented punk rock artists as real people as opposed to clichéd and easily dismissed stereotypes. And they also sent a message to every marginalized person in the world; namely, they matter.
And that is why for many of us, “Please Kill Me” is just as vital and important today as it was when it came out 20 years ago.
The eminent psychologist Carl Rogers proposed that in order for people to grow in a healthy way, they need unconditional positive regard — a supportive environment in which they experience consistent empathy and lack of judgment from others. An individual grows to his or her potential when he or she can experience and work within this type of supportive environment. But an unsupportive environment can do the opposite; namely, destroy an individual’s sense of self.
McCain reflected on how she and McNeil were able to convey empathy and understanding of many punk rock artists who were not always treated respectfully by the public at large. “I think that’s why I’m proud of the book. People have empathy for people they don’t think they’re going to have empathy for,” McCain explained. “I think these were really good people, but most people in society would be like, ‘Ooh, he’s got scabs from shooting up.’”
“Most people were, like, ‘Oh, my god.’”
McNeil described how being empathic and having unconditional positive regard go hand in hand. He told me, “You kind of fall in love with everyone you interview because you’re trying to see the world through their eyes. It’s like, ‘Wow, you did that?’ That’s kind of fucked up. That’s great.’ And then they talk about it.”
He also explained how they were able to present a balanced view of the subjects of the book. “Danny Fields set the tone for that in the book,” McNeil said. “They’re all kind of heroic. And we show that. They’re all assholes, too, like everybody else. Nobody is one thing or the other. Everybody’s great, and everybody’s a jerk.”
“And that’s kind of the way life is, no?”
True enough. But the key to McCain and McNeil’s approach was its authenticity. Being authentic, or being aware of and true to oneself, is seen as a key factor in achieving well-being. Authenticity is also considered an important element of a therapeutic relationship; for the therapist to have it and for the therapist to encourage the patient to attain it.
While many models of authenticity rely on acute self-awareness, the key for McCain and McNeil was actually how not self-conscious their esteem was for the participants in the book. In a previous article based on an interview with McNeil, I described his state of telling stories as flow – a non-conscious state of effortless concentration and complete immersion in experience.
McCain explained how her esteem for the subjects of “Please Kill Me” was quite natural.
“That’s something my shrink brings up: ‘What attracted you to these people?’ Like, why them? I don’t know. What attracts anyone to rock ‘n’ roll? I was obsessed with rock ‘n’ roll by the time I was six. Just listening to records … I don’t know how to answer that.”
“It just didn’t occur to me that they weren’t important.”
For McCain, her fascination with marginalized subcultures went beyond punk. “But I mean, I was attracted to people in the Manson family,” she described. “It was so weird, because in high school I did one of those tests — what you should be when you grow up? It came out a writer specializing in non-fiction, sociology, especially fringe groups. How wild is that?
“So, I don’t know what attracts me to fringe groups, but I always have been.”
Interestingly, two of McCain’s influences were Jean Stein and George Plimpton, who wrote the book Edie: An American Girl about Edie Sedgewick — the subject of the Velvet Underground’s song “Femme Fatale.” The irony is that it was George Plimpton’s brilliant cameo in the movie Good Will Hunting that demonstrated how disastrous it can be when a therapist artificially tries to convey “authenticity.”
“And I wanted to write this book because I always loved ‘Edie.’ And I’m, like, ‘Why didn’t someone do the continuation of ‘Edie’? So when Legs started doing the book about Dee Dee [Ramone], I thought ‘It’s a lot bigger.’ And then he asked me to do it.”
McNeil felt that part of the reason that he and McCain were so nonjudgmental of the subjects of the book was that the connection was personal. “We like these people. To me, they weren’t really celebrities. They’re friends,” he explained. “I loved Joey [Ramone]. Joey and I were best friends for a long time.
“They don’t think they’re going to be judged by us.”
From McNeil’s perspective, his and McCain’s being authentic was simply an extension of his personal experiences with the punk rock scene. In particular, McNeil viewed punk rock as a genuine revolt against what he considered the inauthenticity of hippie culture.
“I realized very quickly that the whole revolution, the whole ’60s dream had become so devalued. And that people were actually asking what each other’s signs were … . The whole culture was completely ludicrous, and it was time for something new … . It’s the inauthenticity, the inauthentic self, and you immediately realize that they’re inauthentic.”
Upon discovering punk rock, McNeil was elated, “I was just, like, ‘I’m home.’ I finally reached my people — the promised land! And they were so weird, and so fucked up. It was so much more interesting than anything else I was going through. That they were even there in the Bowery bar in the very first year, ’75 to ’76 — if you’re coming to this crap bar in the Bowery. It was Debbie Harry and Chris Stein, Marty and Alan of Suicide.”
One way that McNeil and McCain translated their unconditional positive regard into a concrete process while writing the book was to be very open to letting the participants go wherever they wanted with their stories. “We get so much great stuff with people talking about what they want to talk about,” McCain said. “A lot of times, they have to do that for an hour before you can even ask them a question to get them comfortable. But people like to be listened to.”
This approach also included when subjects were not necessarily interested in talking. “They say that they don’t want to talk about that — just kind of defensive — and we respect that. It’s interesting how when you walk into the interview, a couple of people are, like, ‘I’ve been interviewed already, and I’ve said it all.’ And then other people, ‘I’ve got nothing to say.’”
“We want to hear it.”
One of the realizations that McNeil and McCain came to through the interview process was that they did not want to pathologize the punk rockers, or see them as victims of their lives. “Also no one in the scene was a victim. We kind of took the attitude that we’re the perpetrators,” McNeil said. “I think that’s one thing that attracts people to the book. Because people don’t come off as victims, even if they were.”
“It’s also a bunch of people going, ‘You know, we’re fucked up.’ And talking honestly about their situation. And I think that’s kind of relaxing, because you don’t feel like you have to pretend that you’re a superhuman,” he said.
McCain said that it was not always easy to dismiss the possibility that the self-destructive behavior exhibited by some of the punk rockers was a result of mental illness. “Jim [Marshall], my husband, gets so mad at me,” McCain explained. “If someone did something really fucked up, I’ll say, ‘Do you think they have borderline personality disorder?’ And he’ll go, ‘Some people are just bad.’”
“I have a hard time getting my head around that.”
To be clear, however, this approach did not stop McNeil and McCain from having opinions about some of the self-destructive behavior described in the book. “Especially at the end, with the Johnny Thunders and everyone’s kind of dying,” McNeil explained. “And then it’s, like, ‘Maybe you should stop taking all those drugs. Maybe you should stop living this life.’”
“I’m a humanist with limits.”
One of the reasons that “Please Kill Me” still resonates is that it was written in an open-ended way and that the conversation hasn’t ended. “You don’t know the end — how you’re going to feel when you read the chapter,” McNeil explained. “It’s really kind of cool. Because all of the small parts make up this whole emotion that you don’t really know you’re assembling. And the conversation didn’t end.”
“We didn’t put a bow tie on it,” McCain said.
McCain described a story McNeil told her about an interaction that McNeil had with actor Michael J. Fox about the book. “Funny enough, Michael J. Fox said, ‘When I went away from the book, I felt like it was listening to people in the next room.’ I kind of see it as that beautiful. When you’re young, and it’s so nice to have people quietly talking around you as you go to sleep.”
Over time, the influence of “Please Kill Me” has endured. McNeil and McCain have performed a two-hour radio show featured on NPR to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the book. And many of the artists in the book have also received more mainstream recognition. Artists such as Patti Smith and bands such as the Ramones and The Stooges, who were often dismissed by the mainstream have now been embraced in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
McCain is still amazed by the popularity “Please Kill Me” continues to have. “What I find remarkable about the book is the different strata of people that like it. My dentist said, ‘Yeah, I was at this convention, and I said I have a patient who wrote this book, ‘Please Kill Me’ and all the dentists had read it.’ I was at the lawyer’s last week, and someone said, ‘There’s a lawyer at the firm who really wants to meet you.’”
McNeil is still acclimating to the esteem. “I used to stand in front of the mirror and say, ‘I wouldn’t fuck me,’” he said. “I’m glad at age 60, I still have stalkers. It’s really kind of amazing. I don’t know how anyone recognizes me. I’m not on a TV show or anything … . It was funny; I went to see the Murder Junkies last night — and all of these kids kept coming up and thanking me.”
“It was kind of weird.”
Actually, in the eyes of this therapist, it’s not weird at all.
See Gillian McCain and Legs McNeil celebrate the 20th anniversary of “Please Kill Me” in New York City on July 14 at the Ace Hotel.
Photo credit: Annie Watt
An earlier version of this article originally appeared in Psychology Today on July 13, 3016.
