Carl Jung said, "Life addresses questions to us, and we ourselves are a question." From the preface: The major books by psychiatrists, psychologists,and psychotherapists, books by people like Robert Lindner (The Fifty-Minute Hour) and Irvin Yalom (Love's Executioner) tell of their patients' actual travails. The characters are anonymized versions of real people and their real therapeutic treatments. That's natural, of course. So many in this field become writers by default, in order to relate what it's like to have a close-up of peoples' inner processes. This book is very different. I'm not a psychotherapist relating real stories but a writer who, in midlife, happened to become a psychotherapist. I feel it's important to point this out because several of my colleagues, when I told them that the patients in these stories were completely fictional, winked at me as if that were impossible. Sufficient to say that of the eight primary patients and their lives in these stories, I have identified two paragraphs that were anonymized from real life. I once had a very dear patient who would text me on the way to her sessions (As Jen does in the story, "The Sadism of Red and White") "I'm going to be a lot today. I hope you're ready," and I would text her back, "I'm ready. Don't worry." Beyond that, the characters are all invented. I wrote these seven stories for the fun of exploring psychological riddles. And out of compassion for how psychology plays into the rough and tumble of people's lives. Finally, as make-believe, the stories all have dramatic, rather than therapeutic, arcs. *** The seven stories, include: -A man and his wife wrestle with his desire to influence her choice of lovers after he's gone. -An American and his long-distance French lover each fantasize, in their own way, about her life in the South of France. -An architect's breakup with his husband leads his therapist to confront a loss of his own. Kenneth Jedding is a psychotherapist in Greenwich Village, in Manhattan. "In these stories, Kenneth Jedding gives us a window into the mysteries of everyday life, and his warm awareness of people's struggles, passions, and love." - Kelvin Chin, author of Marcus Aurelius Updated: 21st Century Meditations on Living Life. Table of Contents PREFACE LOVE Claims The Sadism of Red and White Sirens ILLUSION Ghosts The Ropes RECOVERY The Forgiving Reconstructions AFTERWORD ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

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