Born in 1911 in Cincinnati, Rule has focused the greater part of his career trying to establish a theory of human behavior that explains why we do what we do. His study of primates has led him to contend that they offer more clues about human motivation than we acknowledge. His favorite thesis: the female has had a greater role in human evolution than the male.

Rule's autobiography begins with the horse and buggy and continues through space travel, two world wars, the Cold War, the H-bomb, and Vietnam. He describes poignantly the childhood rejections and his devil-may-care misadventures before a chance encounter sets him on course to Johns Hopkins Medical School.

Interweaving his personal narrative with the major issues of a century, he reveals an inquiring, sensitive spirit that misses nothing. He witnessed the ground-breaking medical work at Johns Hopkins, the psychiatric debates of the 1950s, the arguments over group therapy, the unbalanced attitudes about substance abuse and health insurance, and discrimination against the disabled.

At the end, he and readers too have learned a great deal about himself and themselves.

"A story of courage and determination that leaves me awestruck."
--Dr. Jeremiah A.. Barondess, President,
The New York Academy of Medicine

"I sincerely hope the book will find the large audience it merits."
--Artie Shaw, bandleader

EXCERPT FROM COLTER RULE'S LIMPING THROUGH THE TWENTIETH CENTURY

CHAPTER ONE

What was your face before your parents met? goes a Zen koan. I can't answer it any more than I can answer the question of why I was born in Cincinnati, Ohio, rather than in some other spot on the globe.

The face that keeps coming up is my mother's. I remember her face as she was ironing in the kitchen of our house in Aurora, Illinois, before I was old enough for kindergarten. I stared transfixed at its beauty.

I don't know how long I had been gawking, but she must have noticed. She shook some water from the sprinkling bottle into her hand and flicked it in my direction. A few drops hit my face to bring me back from wherever I had been. She ended the moment by asking me if I would like to help her sprinkle the clothes. Thrilled, I climbed on a chair and shook the sprinkling bottle over the stack of clothes she placed on the table in front of me. That isolated memory, nothing before, nothing afterward, simply the beauty of my mother's face, sticks with me today-almost a century later.

I must have loved her, but any memory of loving her became lost, and it took more than half a century and countless hours on the psychoanalyst's couch to recover it.

I loved my father, too. When he got home each evening from Chicago, he sat at his roll-top desk and turned his chair so that we could play chess on a side table. In a nearby rack were his many pipes. I remember their wonderful smell and my pretending that I was smoking like him, sucking on the stems for the intriguing flavor. A family anecdote has it that my father bought me a little clay pipe of my own that I put in my mouth -- and apparently repelled by its tastelessness -- promptly pulled it out and slammed it on the floor where it broke into many pieces.

To discover many years later that everything had once been so exciting was surprising -- even confusing. I had assumed that life from the beginning had, except for defiant and stolen pleasures, been thankless and empty verging on despair. Sometime, someplace in childhood an angry dark cloud had covered the sun and I hadn't bothered to look at the sky anymore. Nevertheless, those early years, distorted by hurt and misunderstanding turned out, thanks to the corrected, uncompromising editing of psychoanalysis, to have been buoyant and happy.

Being the only boy in the family, I had a room of my own. As more babies were born -- all girls -- the custom still held. Sisters slept two to a room. High-pitched, lyrical squabbles over territory and possessions, especially wearing apparel, were background music to my growing up. Words like panties, bras, slips, and garter-belts became familiar additions to my lexicon of lesser used words and phrases. And every article of feminine attire, every feminine choice of cosmetics, reading material or what to eat became as familiar to me as grasses to a field mouse.

I was the youngest for a few short years, and I liked both of my older sisters. Closest to my age and always protective and tender toward me, Sissie was my favorite. She must have felt that it was necessary to shield me from Blanche who was not overly courteous or gentle. Blanche had been the first grandchild and, amid a sizable collection of aunts and uncles, had been the center of attention. Claims of her precocity were amplified by the sizable circle of relatives who said that she used words at six months, sentences at one year followed soon by the ability to recite lengthy poems.

Blanche was always the ringleader of the cousins at family gatherings and among the young of the neighborhood wherever we lived. She was the final authority regarding all information or projects. She was the planner and decision maker in the problems that arise in childhood -- even problems of her own creation. One evening when she had been left in charge of Sissie and me, she brought up a hypothetical question of what we might do if a burglar tried to enter the house. First, she suggested, we should all try not to be scared. This promptly set the motif for panic and further discussion that was spooky and whispered. Should we leave the lights on? Yes, turn them all on, then he'd know that someone was home. No, because he could peek and see only children? We turned off all the lights and agreed to turn them on to frighten the burglar just at the moment he started to break into the house. We sat in the dark, our imaginations whirling and diving in swirling spirals. Weapons? We had nothing. A baseball bat? Father's golf clubs? Knives? We had knives! Blanche and Sissie armed themselves with two large butcher knives; I ended up with the bread knife with a wavy edge and not much of a point. How to position ourselves? Spread out: one watching from the second flour, one at the back door, one at the front door. We huddled next to Blanche near the front door. Not for long. Footsteps on the porch. "Get ready," Blanche said. As the latch turned, Blanche snapped on the light, and we all screamed and lunged, knives raised, at the door which slammed shut. We heard a departing figure run across the porch and down the steps. Now what? Should we be scared? Should we call the police?

A few minutes later the doorbell rang and Mr. Carlson, our friendly next-door neighbor, called out. "What's going on in there? Is everybody all right?" Blanche opened the door as Mr. Carlson reassured Selma, the maid, still trembling, that everything was all right. Blanche explained that she had wanted to be sure that we were safe. How could one feel other than safe with such a fearless eight-year-old sister in charge?

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