Question about private/draft posts and authors/use

I am unable to view private posts when I am logged in. Is this correct? Some old forum topics said that this was the correct behavior, but if that is the case, I don’t see the difference between a draft and a private post.
If I am in the Edit section of the admin interface and I click on the title of a private post I’m taken to index.php with a search result of “Sorry, no posts matched your criteria.”
Using WP 1.2, I log in as admin. Under Profile, my “Identity on Blog” is set to Noah. When I view a list of posts, the author for all of the posts is Noah.
Also, there is a discrepancy between the number of posts on my Profile page and the number on the Users page under Authors (I am the only person posting), although maybe this is caused by the Show Category Posts plugin. I don’t know if this might be related to what I’m seeing.
I’d like to be able to see how posts are going to look before I publish them.