ABSTRACT
The common factor linking my careers as a psychoanalyst and as a writer is a passion for stories. As a child, I loved both reading and writing. I’ll be forever grateful to my mother for driving us the 15 miles to the library in nearby Carthage, Missouri twice each month. La Russell, our own town with its population of 128, could not begin to support a library. For fear of running out of something to read, I made a point of checking out the longest books I could find; as a result, I read Dickens, Dostoyevsky, Tolstoy, and the like. Books were my entertainment, my companions, and my glimpse into a world bigger than what surrounded me.
