Common to many different kinds of crisis is a turning point, where old attitudes and behaviors must make way for change. It is at this moment, signaled by anxiety, even panic, that the creative leap is required.

Verena Kast, in her wonderful narrations of actual case histories, describes the typical psychic background of a crisis, as well as the developmental possibilities contained in them. One such case begins: "A young man, twenty- eight years old, an analysand in therapy with me for some six months, called me around midnight to tell me he was about to kill himself. To my question...