I WAS FIRST CONTACTED ABOUT THIS PANEL about a year and a half ago, and it took me well over a year to formulate in my mind just how I would approach the subject. My first reaction was that I just had nothing to say; but that seemed odd to me, at least in an area like the present one, and eventually I had to start examining myself to come up with the source of the difficulty. I came up with three things, and I shall describe them here—in increasing detail as I move from the first through the third—and in so doing I will in fact engage our panel topic: The use of developmental perspectives in adult psychoanalytic practice.1