ABSTRACT
Isaac's entry into psychotherapy felt both urgent and tentative. Isaac felt like a permanent outcast, feeling as though he might never be able to find or create a place, a group, or a person where he could truly belong. He had moved so often that there was no place that felt like home. As he began his therapy, he was not at all sure he would choose a married life, but he wanted to make a clear choice this time, rather than simply flee. Isaac's earliest memories were of his desperate wishes to somehow get his mother and siblings away from his father. As Isaac and the author worked together they spent many sessions flung between the forces of that which wouldn't die inside of him and those that wouldn't let him live more fully. The shadows of despair from the violence that permeated Isaac's childhood constantly threatened to destroy any forward movement.
