Roy Schafer occupies a unique position in psychoanalysis. He is not only one of our leading theorists, but he also has the distinction of having studied under David Rapaport, a doyen of another time past. That means that Schafer had been deeply rooted in ego psychology, both in the higher theoretical and in the clinical aspects of it. At the same time, however, he seems to have remained open to other, then heretical, schools of thought. I recall a time when he spoke at the Los Angeles Psychoanalytic Society during the height of a “Kleinian purge,” instigated by a virulent site visit from the American Psychoanalytic Association, who were troubled at the time that the psychoanalytic training there was not in the spirit of “typical American psychoanalysis” (their words). To everyone's surprise, including my own, Schafer measuredly