In taking a long look at the work of Roy Schafer and the major themes he has explored and discussed, it is tempting to ttry to find a single thread that leads from his initial publications on diagnostic tests to his more recent work on action language and narrative appeal. To search for such a thread is, of course, to put into practice one of Schafer’s better-known claims. He has argued for the central place of the narrative in the way we view someone’s lfie and works, and if I am able to make the pieces of his own career fit together in a persuasive fashion, I can make his point even as I am describing it. To find such a thread will, futhermore, help to uncover some of the similarities beneath what seem like difference in his approach to psychoanalytic phenomena and also to show how each phase of his career is, in a certain sense, a reaction to what had gone before.