Flying Without Wings: Life With Arnold Beisser MD

With his whole life before him, 25-year-old national tennis champion and aspiring young surgeon, Arnold Beisser, was struck down by Polio. "In a few hours, without warning, I was transformed from a doctor to a patient, from an athlete to a cripple. Polio had ravaged me so that I could not stand, walk, sit, eat, drink or even breathe by myself."
Psychiatry was one of the few options open for Arnold. As head of the residency program at Metropolitan State Hospital in California, Arnold brought Fritz Perls as a guest trainer, beginning a relationship that continued until Fritz's death in 1970. Fritz writes about his first meeting with Arnie in In and Out of the Garbage Pail. (Arnie writes about their relationship in The Only Gift.) Fritz is known to have said that Arnie's article, Paradoxical Theory of Change, was the best and most important one in his Festschrift.
Family, friends, colleagues and Arnold himself tell this inspiring journey of loss, acceptance, triumph and love - how he became a pioneer in sports psychology, UCLA Clinical Professor Psychiatry, leader in the community mental health movement, Gestalt trainer, and best-selling author.