Arthur returned to Hamburg.

Years later as young men of twenty they met once again and on a few occasions

went out together searching for amorous adventures. Then their paths and their interests

diverged. Anthime became a businessman and disappeared from Arthur`s life until thirty

years later when they had a brief correspondence in which Arthur sought some financial

advice. When Anthime responded with an offer to manage his portfolio for a fee, Arthur

abruptly ended the correspondence. By that time he suspected everyone and trusted no

one. He put Anthime`s letter aside after jotting on the back of the envelope a cynical

aphorism from Gracian (a Spanish philosopher much admired by his father): «Make one`s

entry into another`s affair in order to leave with one`s own.»

Arthur and Anthime had one final meeting ten years later—an awkward encounter

during which they found little to say to one another. Arthur described his old friend as

«an unbearable old man» and wrote in his journal that the «feeling of two friends meeting

after a generation of absence will be one of great disappointment with the whole of life.»

Another incident marked Arthur`s stay in Le Havre: he was introduced to death. A

childhood playmate in Hamburg, Gottfried Janish, died while Arthur was living in Le

Havre. Though Arthur seemed undemonstrative and said that he never again thought of

Gottfried, it is apparent that he never truly forgot his dead playmate, nor the shock of his

first acquaintance with mortality, because thirty years later he described a dream in his

journal: «I found myself in a country unknown to me, a group of men stood on a field,

and among them a slim, tall, adult man who, I do not know how, had been made known

to me as Gottfried Janish, and he welcomed me.»

Arthur had little difficulty interpreting the dream. At that time he was living in

Berlin in the midst of a cholera epidemic. The dream image of a reunion with Gottfried

could only mean one thing: a warning of approaching death. Consequently, Arthur

decided to escape death by immediately leaving Berlin. He chose to move to Frankfurt,

where he was to live the last thirty years of his life, largely because he thought it to be

cholera–proof.

Philip`s First

Meeting

_________________________

Thegreatest wisdom is to make

the enjoyment of the present

the supreme object of life

because that is the only

reality, all else being the

play of thought. But we could

just as well call it our

greatest folly because that

which exists only a moment and

vanishes as a dream can never

be worth a serious effort.

_________________________

Philip arrived fifteen minutes early for his first group therapy meeting wearing the same

clothes as in his two previous encounters with Julius: the wrinkled, faded checkered shirt,

khaki pants, and corduroy jacket. Marveling at Philip`s consistent indifference to clothes,

office furnishings, his student audience, or, seemingly, anyone with whom he interacted,

Julius once again began to question his decision to invite Philip into the group. Was it

sound professional judgment, or was his chutzpah raising its ugly head again?

Chutzpah: raw nervy brashness.Chutzpah: best defined by the renowned story of

the boy who murdered his parents and then pleaded for mercy from the court on the

grounds that he was an orphan.Chutzpah often entered Julius`s mind when he reflected

upon his approach to life. Perhaps he had been imbued with chutzpah from the start, but

he first consciously embraced it in the autumn of his fifteenth year when his family

relocated from the Bronx to Washington, D.C. His father, who had had a financial

setback, moved the family into a small row house on Farragut Street in northwest

Washington. The nature of his father`s financial difficulties was off limits to any inquiry,

but Julius was convinced that it had something to do with Aqueduct racetrack and She`s

All That, a horse he owned with Vic Vicello, one of his poker cronies. Vic was an elusive

figure who wore a pink handkerchief in his yellow sports jacket and took care never to

enter their home if his mother was present.

His father`s new job was managing a liquor store owned by a cousin felled at forty–five by a coronary, that dark enemy which had either maimed or killed a whole

generation of fifty–year–old male Ashkenazi Jews raised on sour cream and fat–flaked

brisket. His dad hated his new job, but it kept the family solvent; not only did it pay well,

but its long hours kept Dad away from Laurel and Pimlico, the local racetracks.

On Julius`s first day of school at Roosevelt High in September 1955, he made a

momentous decision: he would redo himself. He was unknown in Washington, a free soul

unencumbered by the past. His past three years at P.S. 1126, his Bronx junior high

school, were nothing to be proud of. Gambling had been so much more interesting than

other school activities that he spent every afternoon at the bowling alley lining up

challenge games betting on himself or on his partner, Marty Geller—he of the great left–handed hook. He also ran a small bookie operation, where he offered ten–to–one odds to

anyone picking any three baseball players to get six hits among them on any given day.

No matter who the pigeons picked—Mantle, Kaline, Aaron, Vernon, or Stan (the Man)

Musial—they rarely won, at best once in twenty to thirty bets. Julius ran with like–minded punks, developed the aura of a tough street fighter in order to intimidate would–be welchers, dumbed himself down in class to remain cool, and cut many a school

afternoon to watch Mantle patrol the Yankee Stadium center field.

Everything changed the day he and his parents were called into the principal`s

office and confronted with his bookie ledger–book, for which he had been frantically

searching the previous couple of days. Though punishment was meted out—no evenings

out for the remaining two months of the school year, no bowling alley, no trips to Yankee

Stadium, no after–school sports, no allowance—Julius could see his father`s heart wasn`t

in it: he was entirely intrigued by the details of Julius`s three–player, six–hit caper. Still,

Julius had admired the principal, and falling from his grace was such a wake–up call that

he attempted to reclaim himself. But it was too little, too late; the best he could do was to

move his grades up to low Bs. It wasn`t possible to form new friendships—he was role–locked, and no one could relate to the new boy Julius had decided to become.

As a consequence of this episode, the latter–day Julius had an exquisite sensitivity

to the phenomenon of «role–lock»: how often had he seen group therapy patients change

dramatically but continue to be perceived as the same person by the other group

members. Happens also in families. Many of his improved patients had a hell of a time

when visiting their parents: they had to guard against being sucked back into their old

family role and had to expend considerable energy persuading parents and siblings that

they were indeed changed.

Julius`s great experiment with reinvention commenced with his family`s move. On

that first day of school in Washington, D.C., a balmy Indian summer September day,

Julius crunched through the fallen sycamore leaves and strode into the front door of

Roosevelt High, searching for a master strategy to make himself over. Noticing the