A collection of essays, introduced by Masud Khan and J.D. Sutherland, on a variety of subjects including: observations on a case of vertigo; on idealization, illusion, and catastrophic disillusion; the nature and function of the analyst's communication to the patient; beyond the reality principle; and, the analysis of a detective story.

Anxiety may be debilitating or stimulating; it can result in neurotic symptoms or in improved, heightened performance in an actor or athlete. It is something every human being has experienced. As Professor G. M. Carstairs points out in his Foreword: 'During the course of the twentieth century we have found it progressively easier to concede that we are all to often swayed by emotion rather than reason. We have come to recognize the symptoms of neurotically ill patients are only an exaggeration of experiences common to us all, and hence that the unraveling of the psychodynamics of neurosis can...