This memoir is a story of loss and gain, of alienation and reconciliation, and of how such experiences go into the making of a psychoanalyst. In sharing his own very troubled family history, his decade as a Carmelite monk, his marriage and career as a psychoanalyst, Gargiulo shows how the diverse pieces of one's life can fit together into something that is meaningful and real. This is one person's life - but it relates to us all. "e;We are bound together, each of us,"e; the author writes, "e;in our living, our troubles and our joys. As we hear another's story, we are, simultaneously, writing our own autobiography."e;