This book was not written according to a preconceived plan. Its shape as a book was slow in the making; too slow some may say and for others, not slow enough. The written word, or written speech to use Vygotsky's expression, especially in the form of a book, is one of the strange things that humans do like painting images on flat surfaces, carving and moulding shapes, composing melodies and other activities that seem unrelated to our survival in the way that making fire and tools increases the range of our adaptive abilities. Perhaps these are human ways of releasing the song within so that we can go to our graves less desperate for being heard. Unlike the shared intimacy of face-to-face verbal exchanges, books are addressed to no one in particular and, for the reader, the author's anonymity is protected by a faceless name. A preface to a book is a mediating auxiliary device that allows an author to give a text a face and in so doing allows the reader to glimpse behind the words in much the same way that a visit backstage provides insight into what happens behind the scenes. Vygotsky referred to the place behind our words as the ‘motivating sphere of consciousness, a sphere that includes our inclinations and needs, our interests and impulses, and our affect and emotion’.