This book introduces psychoanalytic theory through the lens of normal and pathological development. The authors stated goal is to provide a basic understanding of the models of mental functioning as developed by different generations and schools of psychoanalytic theorists, an ambitious undertaking. Declaring developmental psychoanalysis as ‘perhaps the richest and most productive’ of all approaches to the study of the mind they aim their writing at students of psychoanalytic theory who are more interested in ideas than practice.