Dr. Gerald Amada was one of the founders and the director of the City College of San Francisco Mental Health Program during a thirty-year career at that college. He had also maintained a private psychotherapy practice for over thirty-five years. He received B.A. and M.S.W. degrees at Rutgers University and a Ph. D. in social and clinical psychology at the Wright Institute, Berkeley, California. Dr. Amada has published twelve books in three genres: psychotherapy, college student conduct issues, and fiction. As well, he has published in professional journals more than eighty articles and book reviews on the subjects of psychotherapy and disruptive college student issues. He has lectured at more than 150 colleges and universities on these subjects to faculty, counseling, and administrative audiences. Dr. Amada is the recipient of the 1984 Award of Excellence in the category of Administrator, Post-Secondary Education, conferred by the National Education Special Needs Personnel, Region 5, which comprises eighteen states.He lives in San Rafael, California, with his wife, Lorraine, and their dog and cats.

This collection of human interest stories is based on Dr. Amada’s many years of psychological practice. The author is willing to share his therapeutic successes, often happily based on good judgment and common sense, as well as his failures from his early years of training. This candid approach results in anecdotes that may have happy endings or leave us as puzzled as they left the author. Readers who are curious about the daily encounters of a psychotherapist will be entertained and intrigued by the great variety of anecdotes.