ABSTRACT
Because of the interest shown in my earlier book On Learning from the Patient (1985), I was asked by the editorial board of the British Journal of Psychotherapy to outline the process of writing it and where the ideas came from. Prompted by that invitation, I describe here the principal influences that lie behind that first volume (and this) and some of the ideas that form the basis from which I am starting here, before I proceed further into the mysteries, challenges, and discoveries that are inherent in the analytic encounter.
