The first book-length study of the psychoanalytic memoir, this book examines key examples of the genre, including Sigmund Freud's mistitled An Autobiographical Study, Helene Deutsch's Confrontations with Myself: An Epilogue, Wilfred Bion's War Memoirs 1917-1919, Masud Khan's The Long Wait, Sophie Freud's Living in the Shadow of the Freud Family, and Irvin D. Yalom and Marilyn Yalom's A Matter of Death and Life.

Offering in each chapter a brief character sketch of the memoirist, the book shows how personal writing fits into their other work, often demonstrating the continuities and discontinuities in an author's life as well as discussing each author's contributions to psychoanalysis, whether positive or negative.