Apologia Pro Vita Mea: An Intellectual Odyssey

This book is a narrative in dialogue form in which the author, now an octogenarian who is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst, and a PhD in philosophy, describes his intellectual evolution from a published laboratory researcher to engagement in the full-time clinical teaching and practice of psychoanalysis, psychodynamic psychotherapy, and philosophy. He reviews the development of his ideas through his many publications and offers commentary on the nature of the origin, environment, and content of his thinking at the time each of these were written, also referring to his voluminous diaries.

This serves as a running report on the changing fashions in the field of psychiatry, psychoanalysis, and philosophy over the past sixty-five years, along with the author’s opinions about the nature and source of these changes. The book is divided into five parts, arranged chronologically from 1953 to the present time. The first part begins with his research training and experience and his research accomplishments. The second part portrays the evolution, over four decades of the turbulent last half of the twentieth century, of his practice of psychodynamic psychotherapy and also shares his long-term experience in the treatment of borderline patients. The third part reports his contributions to psychoanalysis, and describes his experience of what happened to that discipline, as well as his assessment of where the field stands at this time. The fourth part presents his clinical contributions to the subjects of adolescence, psychosomatic medicine, and the phenomena of falling in love and creativity. The final part offers his contributions to philosophy. It also outlines his continuing effort to understand and deal with especially the philosophical problems at the basis of psychiatry and psychoanalysis, as well as the appearance of these issues in the clinical practice of psychoanalysis and psychodynamic psychiatry.