The man on the couch was a young government scientist who presented his analyst with a curious problem–he believed, quite simply, that he was living part of his life on another planet. A more extended version of this case history will be published in Dr. Lindner’s forthcoming book, The Fifty-Minute Hour.

The chair behind the psychoanalyst’s couch is not the stationary object it seems. I have traveled all over the world on it, and back and forth in time. But it remained for Kirk Allen to take me out of this world when he transformed the couch…