It is a singular pleasure to be given the opportunity to interact with the cogent and diversified group of analysts who have coped with the task of reviewing Narration of Desire. As each contributor to this discourse has provided a different template for deciphering essential meanings, each has illuminated limitations and virtues in the text, some of which we had not noticed. In the two years since the book was published, we have had considerable opportunity to refine and recompose our thinking and are pleased by this chance to stress key concepts, elucidate what may have been obscure, address points of theoretical difference, and perhaps in the process, extend the envelope of our own theory.

Our overarching concern was to produce a book which might be clinically useful to a broad range of practitioners. We also wanted to find a way to bring difficult, sometimes abstruse theory, into a more