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Kenneth Wright describes his first book since Vision and Separation as “an extended reflection on Winnicott's holding environment” (p. 14). Maternal holding as the basis for the symbolic development on which self-realization depends is the lynchpin for his discussion of clinical psychoanalysis and of the place of art in human experience. The child's psychological development from dependence to separateness and individuation derives from the environment mother but Wright reads Winnicott's (1967) late paper on mirroring and the mirror role as a shift from a bodily-based (instinctual) paradigm - baby at breast - to one located in sociality: baby and mother are in touch through their interactive responses as registered in facial clues. This shift anchors his interest in non-verbal communication and the transmission of otherness through attunement. An infant first has to come into being; then he or she has to go on being. Both states are linked with holding and both are central to this account of the consulting room