"As a psychoanalyst, Allen Wheelis has helped many patients understand themselves and cope with the legacies of trauma or obsession that shape the neurotic personality. In this memoir, he uses his own life as the uncharted territory for the same process of discovery."--BOOK JACKET. "Inhibition, insecurity, and a cloyingly close connection to his mother mark Wheelis's efforts to establish himself in the adult world. In the course of trying to write a novel as a young man, Wheelis falls mysteriously ill. Eventually he realizes that he has made himself ill so that his failure to write can be excused. It is this perception that leads him to the study of medicine and eventually psychiatry."--Jacket.

"As Wheelis turns his exploratory lens on the dark corners of his own life, we come to understand how a gift for analysis - like a gift for prophecy - brings little comfort to its possessor, and no guarantee of happiness."--Jacket.