This is a uniquely authoritative and intimate psycho-biography of a psychoanalyst by another who was pupil, colleague and friend for over thirty-five years. Fairbairn was -- with Klein and Winnicott -- one of the founders of the 'object relations' approach to psychoanalysis, which bases personality development on the experience of the infant in its early relationships within the family, rather than on great instinctual forces, the classical Freudian view. This is a moving account, one which sheds important light on the history of psychoanalysis and on the wellsprings of creativity in relation to severe inner turmoil.