Becoming and being a psychotherapist: a psychodynamic memoir and meditation.

The author reflects on the circumstances of his becoming a psychotherapist and meditates on their meaning. He notes the effect on his survival through childhood of his grandparents' emigration from Europe and the influence of his close-knit family on his personal needs and values. He then reflects on his early vocational interests; the transformational power of his education, as a student and faculty, at the University of Chicago; and the constructive force of his professional collaboration and personal friendship with Kenneth Howard. Finally, he considers why it is important to him not only to have become but to continue to be a psychotherapist.