This book gives us the broad sweep of a remarkable psychoanalytic writer, Harry Guntrip, whose place is at the forefront of our efforts to explain the role of an emergent and resilient self in the organization and maintenance of human relations. Harry Guntrip brought a unique intensity to the examination of personal experience in constructing and validating psychoanalytic meaning. His heritage draws directly on the tradition of Freud.

In this volume, Jeremy Hazell has done far more than simply collect the records. He has done so through his own lens, through a depth of understanding and valuing that shine through. His introduction is a record of the interweaving of Guntrip’s personal growth with his psychoanalytic understanding. It is a Baedeker of Guntrip’s travels, a rich appreciation, a tribute, and a fine work in its own right.

Guntrip’s work is important to us, perhaps now more than ever. The issues with which he grappled have come to haunt us in a time of ever more consciousness of the toll of social and personal deprivation, and of a growing awareness that our work is not concerned with egos—with the mechanisms of an autonomous mind— as much as it is with selves in relation to others. Taking from his teachers and colleagues, from Fairbairn, Winnicott, and Sutherland, Guntrip worked tirelessly to teach that it is in the depth of personal relations that we find ourselves, and that dedication to this process offers us what we have to give to our patients.