ABSTRACT
For the individual starting out on psychotherapy it often seems as if all that is needed for the relief of his or her nameless distress would be a clear sight of what the reasons for it are. The blissful security of infancy – the inevitable if for some pitifully short foundation of our experience – is, as has been noted, not to be recaptured. The economic structures we inhabit rob most of us of any function extended out into public space, so that our existence becomes imploded into an impacted preoccupation with our selves and our needs. The greatest violence that is done to people in our society is to rob them of a public life. The infrequency with which one comes across people who have achieved maturity is perhaps an indication of how difficult, in the modern world, it is to do so.
