​​During four of the years of the analysis, from 1991 to 1995, Dr. Notman was Acting Chair of Psychiatry at Cambridge City Hospital, one of the few women to chair a department and attend meetings at Harvard Medical School. While well aware of her special status, I did not want, and never searched, for the corroborating evidence. In that sense, the less I knew about her, the better, I felt. And that was how our relationship began, as well. I did not want to “contaminate,” or otherwise skew, our relationship with data sourced elsewhere, outside of the analytic field. I didn’t even read her many papers! I feared that their content might become a distraction for our work and wanted to preserve the purity of our analytic relationship, as well as its vagaries, as much as I possibly could. 

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And in truth, I didn’t need to know the details of her stature. In the most natural way, and without pretense, Malkah exuded her stature. It was this very quality in my future analyst which, along with her easy, ready smile, attracted me to her in the first place. I imbibed her confidence in herself, her inner certainty, and tried to make it mine. Doubt was my albatross. How badly I needed it, needed her! I am deeply saddened by her passing, bereft by her absence, but she will always be a part of me. In the silent hours of our work, I was made whole by the privilege of her presence. 

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I wish to thank my publisher for the opportunity to publish this book, a personal tribute to my analyst, Dr. Malkah Notman, and the profession to which she devoted her long and fruitful career. I am grateful that she was able to read the manuscript, before she died.