In a growing series of remarkable works by Thomas Ogden, this is undoubtedly the finest.

This book is a masterpiece that captures what is most important about psychoanalysis.

As always, Ogden's theoretical concepts are richly illustrated clinically, allowing insight into his way of using the overlapping reverie states of analyst and analysand in the course of the analytic voyage.

One of the leading psychoanalytic theorists of our time dissects the undamental components of the analytic situation in such a manner that the reader will never again view psychoanalysis in quite the same way. He rethinks the use of the couch, the technical approach to dream interpretation, the analyst's and analysand's need for privacy, the role of anguage, and the anatomy of reverie. He suggests that the sense of aliveness in the analytic situation may be the best measure of the process. The same might be said of the relationship between writer and reader, and Ogden brings an electrifying aliveness to the words on the page–and to he psychoanalytic enterprise itself.