Includes bibliographical references and index.

The birth of empathy -- Searching for a mentor -- I want her gone -- Circling back -- The library, A-Z -- The religious war -- A gambling lad -- A brief history of anger -- The red table -- Meeting Marilyn -- College days -- Marrying Marilyn -- My first psychiatric patient -- Internship: the mysterious Dr. Blackwood -- The Johns Hopkins years -- Assigned to paradise -- Coming ashore -- A year in London -- The brief, turbulent life of encounter groups -- Sojourn in Vienna -- Every day gets a little closer -- Oxford and the enchanted coins of Mr. Sfica -- Existential therapy -- Confronting death with Rollo May -- Death, freedom, isolation, and meaning -- Impatient groups and Paris -- Passage to India -- Japan, China, Bali, and Love's executioner -- When Nietzsche wept -- Lying on the couch -- Momma and the meaning of life -- On becoming Greek -- The gift of therapy -- Two years with Schopenhauer -- Staring at the sun -- Final works -- Yikes! Text therapy -- My life in groups -- On idealization -- A novice at growing old.

"Bestselling writer and psychotherapist Irvin D. Yalom puts himself on the couch in a lapidary memoir Irvin D. Yalom has made a career of investigating the lives of others. In this profound memoir, he turns his writing and his therapeutic eye on himself. He opens his story with a nightmare: He is twelve, and is riding his bike past the home of an acne-scarred girl. Like every morning, he calls out, hoping to befriend her, "Hello Measles!" But in his dream, the girl's father makes Yalom understand that his daily greeting had hurt her. For Yalom, this was the birth of empathy; he would not forget the lesson. As Becoming Myself unfolds, we see the birth of the insightful thinker whose books have been a beacon to so many. This is not simply a man's life story, Yalom's reflections on his life and development are an invitation for us to reflect on the origins of our own selves and the meanings of our lives"--