I'm afraid no one will believe the story of my extraordinary tragic life struggling since adolescence to survive schizoid personality disorder and, then, beginning twenty years later, to survive it along with severe depression. Since 1980 I have been engaged in self-therapy based, first, on the hypothesis that most severe mental illness originates in childhood as a developmental adaptation to cope with dangerous emotions aroused by chronic neglect and abuse and, second, based on the hypothesis that the task of psychotherapy is to reverse the developmental adaptation by removing from the personality the defenses that constitute it, those that suppressed feeling and expressing strong emotions, thereby enabling the dangerous emotional reactions to proceed to their natural conclusion. I am now only weeks away from completing self-therapy, since the rage, terror, and despair reactions I revived have almost waned to extinction.