Book excerpt: The Privacy of the Self was the first collection of papers showing the development of the author's thinking over twenty five years of clinical work. He was nurtured in the tradition of Anna Freud, John Rickman and D.W. Winnicott, but his contribution to psychoanalytic literature was a distinctive and personal one. What emerges from this book is the natural and private crystallization of his experiences with his patients and teachers.As he says in his preface: "Psychoanalysis is an extremely private discipline of sensibility and skill. The practice of psychoanalysis multiplies this privacy into a specialized relationship between two persons, who through the very nature of their exclusivity with each other change each other. The first thing I wish to say about my work reported in these papers is that my patients have helped me become and personalize my potential of thought, affectivity and effort into a way of life that I find deeply satisfying.