Traumatized as a child, Marty Wilkens struggles to come to grips with himself and to understand the dark forces driving his life. He may have been seen as living a normal childhood. But inwardly, Marty lived in a world of his own creation. It was a dark and dangerous world which influenced everything he thought and did and which ultimately framed his perception of himself--small, weak, not very bright, and always a failure. Fortified by one misadventure after another, that perception was firmly implanted in his mind. All that changed, however, when Marty joined the US Navy where, removed from his childhood environment, he was able to gauge himself against other boys his own age. And he found that he wasn't what he thought he was. Instead, he was a strong, confident, popular, successful, and typical young sailor-- that is, until his childhood trauma came back to haunt him, this time with a vengeance that all but destroyed his life. Returning home after his service, he found that nothing had changed and soon was again the boy he once was but now driven to succeed, if for no other reason than to prove to himself that he could do it. Faced with a choice of majors, he chose electronic engineering because it was thought to be the most difficult course of study. Later, sensing that something was wrong with him emotionally, and deeming it psychological, he embarked on a private journey, hoping to unearth the root cause of his problems. After reading several books on psychology, he attempted self-analysis. The effects were devastating. He became paranoid and began having thoughts of suicide. Ultimately, an unexpected event forced him to confront the truth, and his childhood trauma was finally brought into the light of day.

--Marvin D. Pipher

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