This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book explores the assessment for psychoanalytic psychotherapy from various perspectives: there are two strands in the assessment interview, an empathic attempt to grasp the nature of the patient's predicament, and a more distanced effort to calculate the likelihood of therapeutic success. It begins with an overview of the literature, in which Ruth Berkowitz demonstrates how many analysts have written about assessment and that, although the field is quite confused, there seems to be a consensus on certain aspects of it. Although it has frequently been said that the scope of psychoanalysis has broadened to include a much wider range of disturbance, and it is not unusual to assess narcissistic or borderline patients and refer them on for psychotherapy, the basic aim has always remained the same.