Acknowledgements

I was fortunate to come into the psychoanalytic world at a time of lively and creative debate, research and consolidation. Melanie Klein had been active in London until shortly before her death in 1960, and Wilfred Bion had only recently left for Los Angeles. An impressive group of people in London, many of them students and colleagues of Klein, were actively exploring the implications of the original observations and theories of Klein and her contemporaries. The figures of greatest immediate importance to me in my psychoanalytic training were Herbert Rosenfeld, Hanna Segal and Betty Joseph. As well as possessing great knowledge and clinical experience, they offered me generous help and support.

In parallel with my psychoanalytic training and practice, I also spent a number of years working in the Psychotherapy Unit at the Maudsley Hospital, where Henri Rey proved an inspiring teacher and colleague. Many of his perceptive ways of understanding patients and his vivid illustrative vignettes remain with me still. I also appreciated my contact with Joe Sandler and Leslie Sohn, both at the Maudsley and in the Psychoanalytic Society.

For many years I have been a member of Betty Joseph’s clinical workshop. This is a special forum in which a group of experienced and talented psychoanalysts discuss ideas and theory arising from clinical material. It provides an opportunity for close colleagues to share in the fascination of the psychoanalytic process, to explore the nature of the difficulties we encounter and the limitations of our understanding. It is an enriching and enlivening experience. Indeed, it is the support of such colleagues, personally and professionally, that allows

one to go on struggling with the difficult, demanding and engrossing work.

My relationships with John Steiner and Ron Britton, two colleagues I particularly respect and admire, have been of great value to me over many years. I have worked especially closely with John Steiner, sharing ideas, clinical