"Dr. Gardner's Hidden Questions, Clinical Musings is full of his characteristic warmth, wit, and wisdom, his erudition, and his unique personal style. He is a wonderful writer - and he is one of the very few of us about whom we need not add 'for a psychoanalyst.' He has a playful mind, one that not only can contain contradictions, but delights in them in the service of teaching us about himself, the psyche, and the human condition. In M. Robert Gardner we have found our psychoanalytic Montaigne."
- Leonard Shengold, M.D., author, Is There Life Without Mother? (Analytic Press, 2000)
"Bob Gardner is that rarest of birds. He embodies a seamless conjunction, a coordination, of talents: a fine intelligence, the voice and pen of a poet, the eye and hand of an artist, an imagination that flies without effort between the profound and the everyday, the curiosity of a cat, and the imaginings about human beings of a born psychoanalyst. He is a constructive skeptic, willing to embrace and wrestle with ambiguities and tolerate their endlessness. He breathes integrity. And thank God for his sense of humor! Following Self Inquiry, Gardner didn't publish much, so the people who know and admire him tend to be those with whom he has had direct contact. Now, following his wonderful On Trying to Teach, we have this beautiful collection of largely unpublished papers, Hidden Questions, Clinical Musings. Read it! His soul, long manifest in informally spoken words, shines through its pages."
- Vann Spruiell, M.D., Training Analyst, New Orleans Psychoanalytic Institute
"What a treat this collection is! Robert Gardner is a necessary voice of sanity, restless curiosity, and humor in psychoanalysis. In this abundant harvest of his musings and reflections, his recollections of his patients, colleagues, teachers, and himself, his slowly and gently achieved understanding of human nature (he would never countenance its being called wisdom), Dr. Gardner has given us, in one place, a kind of summation of what he has learned in a professional lifetime."
- Shelly Orgel, M.D., Former Director, The Psychoanalytic Institute at NYU Medical Center
