After many years of practice as an analyst of adults and children, I came to realize that my work was based on a principle of which I was not consciously aware. Even though the feedback on the quality of my work (from colleagues and the patients themselves) was, on the whole, positive, I had had no more than a handful of patients who saw me for more than five years. It now struck me that, more from a personality trait than any considered scientific parameter, my clinical work aimed at helping the patients to deal with their problems themselves, rather than to foster situations of dependence. I saw some.