Introduction

Perhaps in imposing yet another book it is necessary not so much to apologise as to issue a warning. In the early days of writing, persecutory anxieties are predominant. The fear of producing rubbish, of misconstruing and misrepresenting the precious ideas of others, of misusing the English language, of bringing shame to one's friends - all these preoccupations make writing a torment. But ambition, counterphobic attitudes, defiance of one's internal persecutors - and hope - push one on.

It is now ‘later’; - Act III, as it were, and whether it is comedy or tragedy is not yet clear, but the drama of one's life has taken shape. Internally each time one is promised by an inner voice, “This is the last payment for all you have received.” The persecution has gone, one's limitations are clear. It now becomes an unburdening - of “accretions of stimuli”? Hopefully not. But while the passing on of one's own perception of the vision of genius may look like a legacy it is in fact a Deed of Trust that is being foisted on the unwary. For the visions of genius have ‘fishhooks’ that fasten in one's heart through their piercing beauty of conception and one's view of the world is changed thereby. Catastrophic change lurks in the pages, and the lament, “I'll never be the same”, plays softly in the background.

The problem with one's own Deed of Trust is to avoid being apostolic and instead to seek only to assist and to enable others to read the text of genius, to eschew replacing it with Gospel. I have tried to avoid this pitfall in Book III of The Kleinian Development by making clear what I think of as the Wittgensteinian Position - “I am in a muddle.” In this present volume I try another method, namely “This is how it has come into my consulting room.”

The structure is accordingly rather rambling; like an Alpine village each structure is positioned according to the rocks beneath. Each paper or chapter has been forced by thrilling clinical experiences, and each, therefore, has its own pr