Be patient. Take the time to think about yourself, your life, and your hopes for a better life. This book was written for you, to help you to improve your life, your self-esteem, and your relationships with others. They are worthy goals. Nothing in this world can mean as much. May you have the energy, courage, and perseverance to achieve them! {xv} ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to express my gratitude to Dr. William Altus, then Professor of Psychology at the University of California, Santa Barbara, who went out of his way to encourage my first interests in psychotherapy when I was a graduate student there twenty years ago. To Professor Paul Ricoeur, I would like to express my admiration for his original contributions to Freud scholarship and my enduring gratitude for his willingness to direct my doctoral research at the Université de Paris. I am indebted to Dr. Raphael Becvar, Professor, Marriage and Family Therapy, Saint Louis University, both for making it possible for a faculty colleague to learn from him in several of his excellent seminars and for his later comradeship. To my good friend, Dr. Thomas Maloney, clinical psychologist in Clayton, Missouri, I want to extend my warmest appreciation for his personal guidance and voluntary supervision of my first efforts in counseling. If ever the qualities of compassion, depth of understanding, humor, and genuine care are to be found in one person, they are in him. I would also like to thank Professor Lillian Weger, George Warren Brown School of Social Work, Washington University, St. Louis, for generously welcoming me into her fine seminar in psychodynamic models. {xvi} I especially thank Dr. Renate Tesch and Professor Hallock Hoffman, of the Psychology Faculty of the Fielding Institute in Santa Barbara, for making possible a writer's retreat in the California desert: the loan of their home in Sky Valley made writing the last group of chapters a special and memorable pleasure. One is fortunate to have such friends. If this book became more readable after its first draft, it was due in great part to the conscientious energy of my wife, Karen, in spotting the weeds of obfuscation that seem to grow effortlessly in an academic's garden. I want to thank her for her patience, with both me and the book. I would also like to take this opportunity to thank Miss Libby McGreevy, Assistant Editor, Contemporary Books, Inc., for her helpful suggestions and for her regular doses of encouragement that made writing this book a happy experience. {1} _When You Don't Know Where To Turn_ THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK I would like to introduce this book by telling you what happened to a real and likable person who ran into some very difficult times and as a result entered therapy.