This collection of papers, written over the last six years by Robert Caper, focuses on the importance of distinguishing self from object in psychological development.

Robert Caper demonstrates the importance this psychological disentanglement plays in the therapeutic effect of psychoanalysis.

In doing so he demonstrates what differentiates the practice of psychoanalysis from psychotherapy; while psychotherapy aims to ease the patient towards "good mental health" through careful suggestion; psychoanalysis allows the patient to discover him/herself, with the self wholly distinguished from other people and other objects.