Ivri Kumin, a supervising analyst at the Seattle Institute for Psychoanalysis and Professor of Psychiatry and Behavior Science at the University of Washington School of Medicine, presents a book with many excellent qualities. He shows a teacher's eye for organization and logical development of ideas. Even better, he presents with lucidity the sometimes obtuse notions of other theorists (such as Bion, Klein, Ogden, Kohut, Winnicott). The book is sectioned into three parts, but there is a narrative flow to the text. Furthermore, the text meets the title's promise to explore the earliest psychological stage of infancy and relate it to the psychoanalytic