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Thomas Ogden has provided the analytically informed reader over the years with a thinking space to profoundly examine and explore the analytic experience from both epistemological and ontological perspectives. His prolific publications in psychoanalytic journals are the result of his own digestion of the analytic experiences with analysands and symbolic representation of the experiences using a synthesis of theoretical constructs and his self-analysis of the experience-in-the-moment resulting in a unique and vital narrative precipitated in the analytic space with each analysand. Periodically, he pulls together various of his publications with a common theme and publishes a book which is an in-depth reflection on the theme. In his current offering, he introduces the theme in the introduction (which is original) in asking the question “What do you want to be when you grow up?” (p. 1). In doing so, he shifts emphasis in analysis from the epistemological exploration of the unconscious mind to the ontological experiencing of the environment and its impact on the individual's going-on-being. The early relational experiencing provided by internal and external parental object relations has a significant impact on individual growth and psychic development. Ogden's thesis is that adverse environmental conditions lead to arrested development. Consequently, psychopathology can be considered as “…the inability to grow, to come more fully into being in a way that feels real.” (p. 7). He links the sense of aliveness with the ability for growth, whereas arrested development imparts a sense of deadness, which is managed by coping mechanisms such as repression and dissociation resulting in psychopathological symptom formation. From this perspective, the aim of psychoanalysis is the reestablishment of the growing process through vital experiencing in the analytic space with the analyst. In the process, the growing individual is challenged with the gradual diminishing of the influence