Paul Gray spent his early years in South Dakota, then went on to the University of Chicago where he earned a B.A. and an M.D. At 25 he began analytic training and the practice of Psychiatry in Washington, D.C. For the past quarter of a century his scientific interests and contributions to the major journals have centered on the theory and practice of psychoanalytic technique. As a training and supervising analyst with the Baltimore-Washington Institute for Psycho-analysis he has for many years taught candidates and graduates, as well as social workers and psychiatric residents in the community. Elected twice as Councillor-at Large, his activities with the American Psychoanalytic Association also included serving on several of its Committees, and as Plenary Speaker in 1990. For over thirty years he has been a regular participant in the semi-annual work of the Center for Advanced Psychoanalytic Studies, held at Princeton, N.J.

Paul Gray shows just what it takes to carry out the analysis of the ego, most of all the analysis of defense. An acknowledged master practitioner and teacher, he practices what he teaches, maximizing the patient's experiencing the flow of moments in the here-and-now clinical setting and relationship. This he does by steadily using and developing the patient's own powers of self-observation. An added benefit is an excellent section on supervision. Combining a firm allegiance to psychoanalytic tradition with expertise on the cutting edge of clinical work, Paul Gray's book meets a basic need that will be felt for as long as psychoanalysis lives; it is the need to maintain a focus 'not on the life,' as he says, but on the psyche that both makes that life and copes with it, often all too blindly.