Greatest thanks to Dr. Peter Dunn, medical director of the New York Psychoanalytic Institute Treatment Center, who has been a wonderful teacher and guide in my research for this book and who read every draft. Any errors in psychopathology are his alone.
Thanks to Louise Burke, Nancy Yost, Audrey LaFehr, and all the good people at Dutton and NAL, who work so hard to edit, produce, and sell the books.
Last, each of us on this earth is on a perilous hero's journey. My special kudos this year go to Alex and Lindsey, Jonathan and Tom.
Happy families are all alike. Every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.
– Leo Tolstoy, Anna Karenina
One
Just before twilight on a balmy September New York evening, Dr. Maslow Atkins set out for a jog in Central Park and never came back. He calculated that he had just the right amount of time to run south along the path closest to Central Park West to Fifty-ninth Street and back. Dr. Atkins was a man of regular habits. He timed himself on each outing, knew his speeds and his muscles. And the denizens who claimed the park as their own knew them, too.
Like many compulsive runners, Maslow felt edgy when deprived of his exercise. That day he'd watched a silvery morning turn to angry afternoon thunderstorms, and he'd been preoccupied by the threat of possibly having to run in the rain. The nagging irritation caused the slightest dulling of his senses and, unthinking, the young psychiatrist made a blunder in his work.
Maslow Atkins, M.D., five foot six inches tall, slender build, strong features muted only slightly by the perpetual beginnings of a beard, straight medium-brown hair just long enough on top to occasionally break free of its crest and fall forward to tickle his brow.