1. Rebekah Byrd, Ph.D. James Robert Bitter, Ed.D.

2. The first case... was a blond boy. His expression was resentful.... The woman gave Dr. Adler the case story. “Ah,” the doctor said, reading, “He throws erasers at the teacher. The principal sends him home many times, but still he throws.” He looked down at the boy. “You do this when the teacher’s back is turned?” The boy looked at the stage floor.... “Are you afraid to look at me?” Adler said. The boy looked up at once.... “How old are you?” the doctor said. The boy made a circle with his show. “10,” he said.

3. “10?” the doctor said, backing away. “You are little for 10, are you not?” The blue eyes pinned the doctor with venom. “Look at me,” the doctor said. “I am little for 40. We who are little must prove that we are big. We throw erasers at teachers. Is this not so, Willi?” The eyes remained on the floor. There was a slight shrug. “Come Willi, look at me. What am I doing now?” The doctor slowly raised himself on his toes and let himself down. He did it again. “You know what I am doing?” The boy looked up. “Willi,” the doctor said, “I am making myself bigger than I am.”

4. The little boy almost smiled. He stifled it like a yawn in church. “Do you participate in sports, Willi?” The youngster began to show interest. “Of course, you do. Bet I can tell you which is your favorite.... You play rugby.” Willi’s eyes opened wide. “You play rugby because it is a rough sport. You must always prove that you are big. I can guess what position you play, Willi. You must be the goal tender, neh?” Willi nodded slowly. “And why are you the goal tender? I will tell you. How else can you prove how big you are than by preventing a goal? The boy was pop-eyed. Dr. Adler slowly raised himself on his toes and lowered himself again.

5. “I must be bigger than I am,” he said. “I must prove it to everybody and myself. I must play better than the big boys. I must fight better than the big boys, and I must defy authority, like throwing erasers at my teacher.” Almost a year later, the assistant wrote a postscript to the case. “Patient Willi returned to class. Behavior excellent. One remission. Teacher says it occurred after first 3 weeks. She was at blackboard. Eraser hit blackboard next to her head. She recalled doctor’s instructions, said nothing, walked to the aisle where Willi sat, stood before him, raised herself on toes twice, resumed classwork. No problem since...”

6. ... the child/adolescent therapist makes extensive use of him or herself in clinical interactions. Whether it is convincingly playing an enraged, wounded lion while being tied up in a chair by a seven year old, using one’s knowledge of baseball players, to put a fourth grader at ease, or sharing some of one’s own adolescent social difficulties to help a highly anxious teenager feel like part of the human race, it is clear that the child/adolescent therapist’s personality is often on display. (p. 569)

7. I would ask you to remember only this one thing,” said Badger. “The stories people tell have a way of taking care of them. If stories come to you, care for them. And learn to give them away where they are needed. Sometimes a person needs a story more than food to stay alive. That is why we put these stories in each other’s memory. This is how people care for themselves. One day you will be good storytellers. Never forget these obligations. (p. 48)

8. The individual effort to compose a life, framed by birth and death and carefully pieced together from disparate elements, becomes a statement on the unity of living. These works of art, still incomplete, are parables in process, the living metaphors with which we describe the world. (p. 18) Composing a life involves a continual reimagining of the future and reinterpretation of the past to give meaning to the present, remembering best those events that prefigured what followed, forgetting those that proved to have no meaning within the narrative. (pp. 29-30)