This book takes its examples from psychotherapy, psychoanalysis, and couple and family treatment. Experienced therapists Winer's humanizing text helpful in putting their own work and their own ambitions in perspective. It offers a framework for living with the complexity of the therapeutic endeavor without falling prey to the practitioner's two great occupational hazards grandiosity and despair. All therapists will find Close Encounters liberating as it helps them to feel more self-accepting in the face of their difficult task of learning to make use of themselves as agents of change.