With the papers in this volume, I want to turn a spotlight onto this forgotten dimension of our mental life. I have selected essays that expand and develop the trunk of Freud's original notion into a differentiated concept that now can be used as an integral part of our theoretical and clinical thinking. My hope is that the reader will gain a new sense of self- and object-preservative needs and anxieties, which are pervasive but often almost unnoticeable as they pave the ground in the depths of an unconscious territory that waits to be revealed and analyzed.

This book is organized into four sections preceded by an introduction in which I present a brief and easily accessible summary of the main self-preservative drive, elaborating and integrating it into our contemporary
theory of the mind. To me, this opened a door to a new, still-unexplored, and mostly unconscious part of the mind.