life and death / stand face-to-face, cooing at each other— / … the braided nature of life and death, they pour /and empty each into the other …

This volume of Irma Brenman Pick's collected papers provides the reader the close-up experience of a gifted clinician going about her daily work; we are invited to observe, feel, and learn. The tone of her writing, steeped in theory, is of a theory that has been lived in, used fully and with love. She leans heavily on the work of Melanie Klein and at the same time has a distinctive voice, an analyst who has found her own way. Her voice comes through strong and clear in the book's first chapter, in what I