ABSTRACT
In the summer of 1982 Alyce Carhart chose me as her therapist. is was no ordinary choosing. She had read a book, Getting Free: Women and Psychotherapy (Hinton, Sherby and Tenbusch, 1982), I had co-authored with two other women therapists. Since our names were listed alphabetically, I was the second author. Nowhere in the book could you tell which of us had written any particular section. Our pictures did not appear. It was years before the advent of the Internet and the possibility of patients Googling prospective analysts. Knowing nothing factual about me, Alyce still chose me. She wrote, told me she was a twenty-year-old college student, that she had read the book and wanted to see me in therapy. I sent a return letter, telling her that I would soon be leaving on vacation and that I was not taking any new patients until my return. Since she was attending a university sixty miles from my oce, I also suggested it might be preferable for her to see a therapist closer to her school. She wrote back and told me she would wait until I returned. Although I felt leery about the apparently inexplicable attachment she already felt towards me, I agreed.
