This is a book which crosses boundaries and opens the way for creative surges towards more integrative therapeutic interventions in the manifold experiences of suffering in both body and mind. The contributors are multidisciplinary and their psychoanalytic approaches derive from differing theoretical backgrounds. They work in diverse settings, with children, adolescents and adults suffering from a broad range of conditions. Yet the book is not just a collection of disparate papers. It has a cohesion, as all the writers are engaged in a thrust towards innovative work in applying psychoanalytic thinking to the health care of those whose dysfunctions are both physical and mental.

The foreword by Henry Krystal of Michigan State University and The Michigan Psychoanalytic Institute includes a brief survey of earlier work in this field,