Peter Giovacchini is a Chicago analyst, well known particularly for his work with borderline and narcissistic patients. Theoretically, he espouses an American object-relations point of view, with the stress on the intrapsychic rather than the interpersonal or the relational. He is now in the twilight of his career, and in this book he looks back at the theoretical, technical, and political changes he has seen over his years of practice.

Giovacchini trained in Chicago and is familiar with Alexander's brief therapies from the 1940s based on “corrective emotional experiences.” As a close friend of Heinz Kohut, he saw the rise of the self-psychology movement and its cultish followers in the 1970s. Therefore Giovacchini is well aware of the inspirational, unorthodox revisions as well as the gradual changes in mainstream