It is quite fitting that Thomas Ogden's seventh book is concluded by a chapter on psychoanalytic writing. It is an art through which Ogden has achieved remarkable prominence as a psychoanalytic thinker.

For 30 years (his first articles were published in the mid-1970s), he appears to have followed a steady professional lifestyle. Its starting point is his office in San Francisco, described in many clinical vignettes in this book. In addition to seeing patients [preferably on the couch, irrespective of frequency (Ogden, 1996)], he