Elizabeth Lloyd-Mayer, renowned psychologist, researcher and clinician. She graduated from Radcliffe College, she received her Ph.D. from Stanford University and graduated from the San Francisco Psychoanalytic Institute, where she subsequently devoted herself to training and supervising analysts. She was an associate professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley and in the Psychiatric Department at the University of California Medical Center. She maintained a parallel private practice in Berkeley for 30 years.

She served on the editorial boards of major journals in the field of psychology and was the first recipient of the prestigious Menninger Prize from the American Psychoanalytic Association.

Dr. Mayer passed away shortly after finishing the book.