It’s a unique challenge to write fictional accounts of psychotherapy when the author is also a practicing psychologist. Our everyday encounters take place in more contexts than we are aware of, calling for images and descriptions that never conform to a simple appreciation of me, you, ours, distilling and hiding explanations, illuminating wish and need.

These are not disguised stories about actual persons in therapy; they are stories of imagined people, often collective tributes representing all the therapy with women who have been violated, also men in search of meaning, love, culture and family, or finding meaning in relationships when the past has led to pain. A story emerges in a language of intimate construction. Some of these tales are not concerned with therapy; the connecting theme is always the richness of subjective life and our influence on each other’s deepest regions, which can occur within the first moments of meeting.