Who Am I Really P

A psychotherapist and author of If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!, Kopp offers his life story as an exercise in self-definition. The goal: for him (and readers) to ""retell'' childhood experiences so that ``later on, our stories can end more happily than they began.'' Born an only child in a Jewish section in the Bronx, Kopp forever disappointed his mother and his father acquiesced in his wife's berating attitude. Kopp believed he was basically bad, and he notes that ``in retrospect it seems that being `bad' merely meant expressing my feelings of my own. I was not to be obviously beyond parental control.'' He recounts a stormy adolescence, difficult schooling (when he achieved much but was nonetheless dissatisfied), his troublesome early career years, his ongoing struggle with a brain tumor. Except for some choppy writing and inexplicably fleeting references to early girlfriends and his wife, this is a considered, inspiring book. (April)