ABSTRACT
Long before I knew exactly what a therapist was, I knew I wanted to be one. From the time I was in elementary school I was intrigued by the complexity of the human condition. I was perpetually curious about why certain things were the way they were. My parents and grandparents often attempted to provide me with satisfying answers but seldom did they, or did the insights they offered, succeed in soothing the soul of my incessant sense of curiosity. I always seemed to have had an endless stream of “why” questions that ranged from the absurd to the profound, from micro- to macro-related issues; from questions about the here-and-now to those about the afterlife … assuming that such a phenomenon even existed. Beneath all of the questions was a blaze of curiosity, intrigue, and dogged determinism to gain a firmer grasp of the nuances that help to elucidate what made us tick as human beings. I wondered how twin brothers, David and Donald Watkins, family friends, could share the same parents, grow up in the same family, and yet be so fundamentally different. I had the same query about my family: how did my brother and I grow up to be so different, although we shared the same parents, were just two years apart in age, and did virtually everything together as children? I also wondered why my first cousin Johnny had no siblings and why his father was alive but not present in his life. Although these curiosities were persistent, they were fairly benign compared to the ones that constituted the major “haunt” in my life.
