ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a story which is important, of course, for understanding Tom, particularly from the viewpoint of a therapist who might attempt to penetrate the mystery of his life: why he was compelled by fear to construct a narrow existence, why he had apparently never developed the capacity to form the close relationships with people that constitute the greatest gifts in the challenging and often lonely life, and how he might be helped through the opportunity of this crisis to a fuller and more rewarding existence. Yet Tom’s story can have a more general meaning as well. It is an example of the curious and tragic fact coming to people’s awareness about places that provide care: they can produce negative as well as positive results. In Tom’s case, the positive result was unambiguous: he is alive only because of the medical technology that saved him.
