This is a book written in the 1950s by a Swiss psychoanalyst, Germaine Guex, who was born in France. It has only recently been translated into English by Peter Douglas. Mr Douglas had been in therapy for four years and had reached an impasse until he read Germaine Guex's work, La nevrose d'abandon and realised that the profound and long-lasting effects of abandonment were at the root of his problems.

Although Ms Guex wrote her seminal work over sixty years ago what she has to say is still highly relevant today. She explains how an abandonment neurosis can often be mistaken for something else and therefore the therapy may start off on the wrong footing. She says that the therapist has “to create from the very beginning—one human being to another—milestones of trust through the delicate, subtle role and weighty responsibility that the analyst must bear” (p. 3).