Nagera's latest book provides a timely reminder of the centrality of the developmental point of view to psychoanalytic theory and to a well-balanced diagnostic and therapeutic approach. To properly understand our patients, we need to attend to their past, as it actually occurred, as it is perceived intrapsychically, and as it is reconstructed in the analysis.

The volume is organized into four sections. The first, General Developmental Considerations, provides rich illustrative material demonstrating the applicability of the Developmental Profile, which Nagera was instrumental in refining while he was Chairman of the Profile Committee at the Hampstead Clinic. While Nagera perhaps