This paper summarizes the development of my professional identity as psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. It describes the influences on my dedication to the study of severe personality disorders, namely, the training experiences I had under the guidance of Ignacio Matte-Blanco, in Chile; the research team of Jerome Franck at Johns Hopkins; the work in the Psychotherapy Research Project of the Menninger Foundation under Robert Wallerstein, my personal working relationship in New York, with Edith Jacobson, Margaret Mahler, the introduction to British Psychoanalysis by John Sutherland, and to French analysis in sabbatical times in Paris. I conclude by a brief overview of my theoretical orientation, combining ego psychological, object relations, and Kleinian approaches in the development of a synthesis that inspired my present research on the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of severe personality disorders.