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While reading Dr. Purcell's professional memoir, “Becoming Related: The Education of a Psychoanalyst,” I was moved by his reflections on his first exposure to analytic ideas in a psychiatric hospital, mentored by a nurse who, though not psychoanalytically trained, was psychoanalytic in her approach. Hence in his description of Sybil, he formed an idea of how an analyst might think and work. Purcell had met a person who was sensitively attuned to the patient Tommy's needs as well as to Purcell's own needs. In Purcell's efforts to come close to Tommy, he came to know him as a person, not only as a patient. As he was drawn inexorably into the patient's feelings of love and hate, Purcell experienced the power of closeness in relationships, a formative influence that he would eventually carry over into his psychoanalytic understanding.
In musing on what I might write as a discussant of this paper, I recognized that my formative experiences followed a somewhat different arc than Purcell's and started much earlier in my development. I imagine each of us follows a different path, one that winds and twists through the course of our lives and has both conscious and unconscious determinants. Like Purcell, I can look back at moments in my life that were