A distinguished and revered elder of the British Psycho-Analytic Society, Dr. William Gillespie is one of the few British psychoanalysts who began training in the Vienna of the early 1930s. Later he became well known in England for his pioneering studies of sexual perversion, and for his views on female sexuality, regression in old people facing death, and on instinct theory.

In this first ever collection of Gillespie's papers, editor Michael Sinason has written an introduction that looks back on the productive 90 years of Gillespie's life. Sinason writes movingly of his early life in China and Scotland and shows his development as a psychoanalytic thinker, organizer and administrator, husband and father. Charles Socarides, an American psychoanalyst eminent in the field of perversion and its treatment, discusses the innovations introduced by each of the papers in the collection and shows how Gillespie's ideas influenced his own contributions and affected the field as a whole.

William Gillespie is internationally known not only for his scientific contributions, but also for his skills, integrity and tact in managing the International Psycho-Analytical Association adn the British Psycho-Analytical Society, where he was trusted and respected by Melanie Klein and Anna Freud.