The choice of title for this volume is designed to provoke interest; its content proves to be both controversial and political. The implied promise that "master clinicians" will demonstrate their methods of treating very regressed patients is bound to excite the interest of all psychoanalysts who strive to understand the extent of the regression that is compatible with and necessary for a successful psychoanalysis. Furthermore, the idea of looking to more experienced or "master" psychoanalysts to learn from is deeply ingrained in psychoanalytic traditions. The political aspect involves the attempt by the editors to establish the superiority of their view that psychoanalysis is the treatment of choice with very severely disturbed patients. In regard to this assertion they minimize the importance of divergent tendencies in North America, on the one hand (where such an idea has been resisted), and in Europe and South America on the other, where psychoanalysis has been seen