Dr, Bernard S. Siegel attended Colgate University and Cornell University Medical College. He holds membership in two scholastic honour societies, Phi Beta Kappa and Alpha Omega Alpha, and graduated with honours. His surgical training took place at Yale New Haven Hospital and the Children's Hospital of Pittsburgh. He is a pediatric and a general surgeon in New Haven. In 1978 Dr. Siegel started Exceptional Cancer Patients, a specific form of individual and group therapy utilizing patients' dreams, drawings and images. ECaP is based on 'carefrontation', a loving, safe, therapeutic confrontation, which facilitates personal change and healing. This experience led to his desire to make everyone aware of their own healing potential.