Erna Furman was a dedicated child therapist and analyst, a prolific writer whose several books and nearly two hundred articles span half a century. This collection of articles, which, sadly, was to be her last, had a dual purpose. First, in response to requests from “colleagues, friends, and parents,” it was meant, she wrote, “to bring together my various papers on parenting, and especially on mothers and mothering, because some that were published were not readily available and a number never appeared in print.” Second, she said, it addressed “my own need to integrate my thinking and feeling by reaching back to its professional beginning, almost forty years ago, by following in my own footsteps, and assessing how far I have been able to come in my understanding” (p. vii).