Occasionally circumstances bring a very special book to one's attention—a title one would otherwise have been unlikely to encounter. When this happens, it feels like winning the lottery. A book falls into one's hands by chance, and things change. Such a peripeteia involves a moment of recognition, the rediscovery of a lost or obscured part of oneself, or the refinding of an old object. Something already in us expands and becomes something new.

In the psychoanalytic literature, with its own versions of the usual levelling forces, such as ideology, fashion, marketed popularity, and the bestseller syndrome, meaningful texts can be hard to find. Deep insights quickly