This volume highlights several of the areas of tension and difficulty that have met psychoanalysis since its inception, and provides an incisive, informative history of various attempts to surmount these, finally leading to the author's own suggestions for a practice of psychoanalysis that remains open to the vicissitudes of the infinite set of processes of the human mind. In drawing from clinical examples and his own experience in addition to a wealth of psychoanalytic theory, the author examines such topics as the referential role of theory and the significance of the analytic space from both a personal and professional standpoint. As the author suggests, the dialectic between psychoanalytic theory and practice is one that is both highly problematic and potentially very nourishing. Thierry Bokanowski's volume provides an invaluable guide to analysts navigating the difficult terrain of contemporary psychoanalytic theory and practice.