Foreword by Dr. Allen Frances -- Part one: Building a life experienced as worth living - Descent into Hell - I will prove them wrong -- A traumatic invalidating environment -- A stranger in a strange land -- I had to leave Tulsa -- Part two: On my way to Chicago - Intellectual and spiritual transformations - The path to thinking like a scientist - My enlightenment moment in the Cenacle Chapel - I have proved my point! - Love that came and went, came and went - A suicide clinic in Buffalo - The development of behaviorism and behavior therapy - Fitting in at last: small fish in a big pond - What Have I done? - Finding a nurturing community - Like a fish on a hook - Finding a therapist, and an ironic twist -- Part three: A thumbnail sketch of DBT - Finding my feet in Seattle and learning to live an anti-depressant life - My first research grant for behavior therapy and suicide - Science and spirituality - My fight for tenure - The birth of dialectical behavior therapy - Dialectics: the tension, or synthesis, between opposites - Learning acceptance skills - Not just acceptance--radical acceptance - Good advice from Willigis: keep going - Becoming a Zen master - Trying to put Zen into clinical practice - Midnfulness: we al have wise mind - DBT in clinical trial -- Part four: The circle closes - A family at last - Going public with my story: the real origins of DBT -- Afterword -- Acknoweldgments -- Appendix: Reasons for living inventory by subscale -- Index.