Therapist

What happens when the therapist is as sick as his patients? That is the question posed in this amateurish first novel by Vogue editor Alleman and Garrett, a pseudonymous practicing psychiatrist. Dr. Paul Manning is tormented by doubts about his career, sexual impotence with his wife and the long, painful terminal illness of his mentor, Dr. Max Abrams. After he hastens Abrams's death via a mercy killing, Manning's mental stability becomes more and more precarious; soon he feels he's being haunted by Abrams's spirit. When a young woman patient whom he has seduced threatens to reveal his connection with Abrams's death, Manning hypnotizes another patient, a violent alcoholic, to terrorize the woman. A suitably grim conclusion isn't enough to salvage this slim novel, whose farfetched plot, pedestrian prose and predictable ending thanks make it a lackluster effort. (Dec.)