Although this paper was written so that the contributions of the late Dr Marjorie Brierley should not be forgotten, they could by no means all be covered. Most are referred to, but more attention is given to her work for the British Society, her seminal paper on affects, and to some of her views about the work of Melanie Klein. Particular emphasis is given to her important ideas clarifying the distinction between clinical and abstract thinking, with mention of her wide-ranging further elaborations of what she saw as two separate branches of psychoanalytic theory. Qualities including her personal and administrative talents, her exceptional intellectual rigour, her breadth of knowledge and understanding, and the elegance, fluency and dry wit of her writing, are all saluted.