Karl Menninger was a towering figure in American psychiatry and psychiatric education through the middle of the twentieth century, and played a major role in propagating the psychoanalytic idea within educated American circles. This account is written from the perspective of seventeen years in Topeka, Kansas , at the Menninger School of Psychiatry, the Topeka Institute of Psychoanalysis, and on the staff of The Menninger Foundation, during which years the author had close continuing contact with “Dr. Karl,” as he was called. The author describes Karl Menninger in what he feels to be his areas of real greatness, and also with his inevitable human frailties.