I’m originally from a rural town in southern Louisiana where I was raised the only child of a single, working parent. (Something Mark Twain sounding goes here.)

The south I knew was complex, simultaneously proud and mournful. It had a convivial, hot-blooded elan. It celebrated devout friendships. It was not self-reflective or particularly ambitiious.

Left to my own devices I got into trouble continuously. I was civilized to the world of man by trial and error.

I’m first generation college educated, having attended Louisiana State University where I earned dual bachelor’s degrees in exercise physiology and biology. I graduated magna cum laude and earned a place among the twelve brightest and most accomplished students in my class of over three thousand. Before medical school I worked at the NIEHS laboratory of respiratory biology studying RSV and at Esperance Pharmaceuticals where I helped characterize anti-cancer biologics in development.

The “wind of freedom” blew me westward to the Stanford University Medical Scientist Training Program where I received two doctorates (an M.D. and a Ph.D.). Physician-scientists, as we are called, represent a minority of the overall physician population with a unique bearing towards scientific discovery. Over my fellowship-funded years in the Cancer Biology Program at Stanford, I learned to integrate multi-omic data into statistically defensible, visually compelling stories of human disease. I was also a Stanford SPARK scholar, having spent two years repurposing drugs to treat infectious diseases in the developing world. I envisioned a career for myself making history through the playful discharge of curiosity in the laboratory.

However, in graduate school, I struggled with uncertainty about the future and feelings of isolation. Unsure where the problem lay, I tried to become a more proactive student of the mind; studying self-help, cognitive psychology, and philosophy. These learnings were intellectually stimulating and partially consoling but there was no simple path forward. I couldn’t think my way out of loneliness. I tried brief psychotherapy through the student health clinic, finding it a poor fit for my intensity, though it had inklings of potential. I began reading psychotherapy textbooks in search of liveable wisdom. As the noticings of clinical theory infiltrated my perception, the aspects of my life that were difficult became interesting and then rapturously so. My social relationships deepened in lockstep.

In my final years of medical school, I remained captivated by minds and their minding.

I was celebrated by patients and mentors for my anomalous listening skills.

Listening was a way to dilate time in a frenetic surround.

In a medical world where physical cures were rare and treatment decisions were decided by protocol, I was drawn to comforting people.

The books I read and my own internal overcoming served as lemma.

When I returned to medical school from my PhD studies, I continued to be celebrated by mentors and patients for my uncommonly deep listening that contrasted with instrumental hospital life. In a medical world where physical cures were rare and treatment decisions were decided by protocol, I was drawn to comforting people. It was a way to meld creative experimentation and excitement. Psychiatry gave me the chance to hone my listening to a fine edge; to help people think and feel their way towards lives worth living.

Not so far from sunny farm, In a city shrouded in fog, known for a countercultural revolution, with a storied residency program and a psychodynamic esprit de corps. Hollowed for its place in the history of clinical theory and a burgeoning interest in psychedelic psychotherapy research. I worked with patients of all stripes. And I continue to serve as a volunteer faculty member training students and residents in the psychiatric emergency room at San Francisco General Hospital. As real as it gets.

Psychodynamic theory was simultaneously intellectually and emotionally fulfilling. It involves taking psychological life as seriously as it actually feels. Reconciling life and love. Depth, insight, relationship.

It was the only theoretical discipline that could tolerate skepticism about its methods.

The determinisms that sequence thoughts reminded me of the complex cancer genome of my cryptographer past.

Like the cancer genome, the mind is a complex system that writes its own story on a tapestry forged over eons of evolutionary time.

The long days of graduate school and the long nights of graduate medical education

I know how to be humble, visioneer, rise, how to fall, how to mourn, and how to recover and rise from ashes and still believe in the search. I know about the dead heave of the will and the dark night of the soul. I walk the walk of an introspective life.