As psychotherapists we learn over and over again that we cannot take for granted that we will understand the full meaning of our patients' communications. We have to feel ourselves into what we hear, guided by our perception of affective coloring and by the patient's choice of wording. The word empathy does not convey this searching listening. Our minds, in a sense, scan levels of possible meaning based on past experience and knowledge. This book aims at enriching or expanding this scanning ability much in the same way that a good art history