These two volumes—selected papers from one of the foremost contributors to psycho-analytic practice—are exceptionally stimulating to read. Dr Greenacre does not claim to be primarily a theorist, but can acknowledge her debt to theory and its necessary disciplines.

She herself sees the practice of analysis as needing to combine the vision of both hardcore scientist and artist. It may be her ability to embody such a combination that gives her own detailed clinical study an extra quality of excitement; the reader gets swept into sudden speculative outreaches from which return journeys—the necessary checking of minutiæ—must be made. Thus, in a paper on differentiating the fetish from the transitional object (pp. 315-34) she gives a quick glance at Leonardo de Vinci, throwing away a crushed sheet of paper, and—and this is where she recognizes giftedness—from staring at its discarded form recreating new work. It is a glimpse, no more; she resumes her discourse. But it is this combination of vision and thought that makes her writing particularly