To me, looking at other people in terms of what is wrong with them —these gradations of disturbance— was and is distasteful. Always implicit in the doctor's view is, of course, how much more "healthy" you are than they. And this is almost never the case (page 94).

Somewhat to my surprise, I was accepted for membership in the society [the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Society]. I was looking forward to giving my inaugural paper, "The Navel of Neurosis: Trauma, Memory and Denial," the one I had written with my wife, Terri, and which Schiffer [Masson's analyst] had claimed as his (page 136).

Because I was so eager to believe I was being helped by a talented, ethical, benevolent, and intelligent man, I sought evidence for this wherever I could. Anything less than this was too dreadful to contemplate (page 40).

I was thrilled. I loved the idea of opening everything up, of making old and secret documents available to anybody who wished to see them (page 183).

Almost all analysts in America are physicians and psychiatrists, and the medical profession is layered into a strict hierarchy. Every psychiatrist in a hospital is chief of some service, or head of some department (page 145).

"Every day I get many calls, from all over the world about how awful you are. How awful this article is. How bad it all is for psychoanalysis (quoting Eissler, page 193).

Eissler's rage knew no bounds. He did not like being harrassed by other analysts. "Just today Masud Khan called me from London and asked me to dismiss you from the Archives. Board of directors|The board members, all of them, or at least most of them, are asking for the same." (page 194)

But Eissler also knew how the very people making the complaints and demanding my dismissal for what was, after all, a disagreement about the history of psychoanalysis, were guilty of extraordinary breaches of ethical conduct. (page 194)