Dr Wurmser is well known for his work with difficult psychoanalytic patients, those who suffer from severe neuroses marked by borderline and narcissistic features. Out of his clinical work he has created an impressive number of papers, book chapters and monographs. One of these, The mask of shame, is now included in the PEP database as a classic psychoanalytic text: it is a pioneering investigation of shame as a critical affect in the understanding and treatment of psychopathological states. Dr Wurmser's work also includes studies of the roles of trauma, of the superego, of masochistic