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The work of psychotherapists and psychoanalysts is deeply influenced by their character and personality, as well as their overt life experiences. Since I can best illustrate this with the case I know best, myself, this will be a very personal paper. I give myself permission to write it because it is a subject not often written about in spite of its obvious importance. In the very month of my retirement after sixty-six years of practice and after receiving a diagnosis of terminal cancer, I find myself thinking about the evolution of the way I work. I am struck by the mix of what was originally learned, what was experientially gathered through clinical practice, what emerged through other professional but not directly clinical experiences, and, additionally, deeply personal factors. I feel it is of some general value to lay this out because, in one form or another, it is undoubtedly true that all of us are shaped by numerous factors beyond our psychoanalytic training. Many years ago, when I was writing up extensive clinical material from a patient, material that included highly personal sexual fantasies, and asked him for permission to publish it (with disguise and after he had read it), he said: “Sure! Doesn't everybody have that junk?” All of us, I believe, have this “junk” also, but it is certainly not only “junk”; it can productively shape our style of work, our commitment to the work, and our individual creativity in the work. Of course, it can also create problems and interfere.