David Tuckett is a Distinguished Fellow of the Institute of Psychoanalysis, and currently Professor and Director of the Centre for the Study of Decision-Making Uncertainty at University College London (UCL). As an undergraduate he studied Economics and Politics with Sociology at the University of Cambridge, during which time he became very interested in psychoanalysis. He went on to train as an analyst a few years after graduating and qualified with the British Psychoanalytical Society in 1977. Throughout his career Professor Tuckett has worked part-time in private clinical practice, while also conducting research in the fields of psychology, medicine, the social sciences and, more recently, economics. He has held positions at various academic institutions. He was formerly President of the European Psychoanalytic Federation, Editor in Chief of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and Principal of the Health Education Studies Unit at the University of Cambridge. In 2007 Tuckett won the Sigourney Award for his contributions to psychoanalysis. Tuckett’s published work has focused on some of the core issues in psychoanalytic practice, particularly the clinical situation and training. He has been influenced by a broad range of psychoanalytic thinkers, in particular by Sigmund Freud, Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, Donald Winnicott, Ella Sharpe, Charles Rycroft, Herbert Rosenfeld, Betty Joseph, Ron Britton, Antonino Ferro, Ernest Jones and John Rickman. He has two main interests: the fundamentals of clinical technique and how to talk about them; and analytic training. He has always believed in a pluralistic approach to psychoanalytic theory and technique, and in the importance of scrutinising individual theories according to their merits, rather than to the school or cultural tradition to which they belong. He emphasises the importance of this kind of empirical attitude in Psychoanalysis Comparable and Incomparable: the Evolution of a Method to Describe and Compare Psychoanalytic Approaches (2008). The work of comparison is, in Tuckett’s view, a highly valuable tool for both refining one’s own ideas and deepening our understanding of psychoanalysis as a whole. As he writes in Psychoanalysis Comparable and Incomparable: ‘Recognizing difference provides scope for thought [...] Difference, differentiation and comparison allow articulated thought and are at the heart of much creative development in many fields.’