Merle B. Turner earned degrees in psychology and philosophy at Willamette University, Stanford University and the University of Colorado, Boulder. His PhD thesis reported on experiments in perception which he found were paramount to ones preferences. Regarding friendship, he realized that one’s perception of another was the root of the forming and dissolving of friendships. Throughout his life, but especially in the post-war years, as a student at Stanford and the University of Colorado, as a professor at San Diego State University, and as an ocean cruiser on his sailboat, he was led to observe himself, his colleagues, fellow adventurers and his family in the context of how friendships are made, how they disintegrate, and how alienation may occur following some critical incident. He decided he could construct a model of friendship, including the role of critical incidents which might be useful not only to himself but to others. He presents his model in this book.