Dear Editors

Thank you very much for the opportunity to respond to Anna Motz's letter regarding my paper in BJP 24(3): 317-27.

Estela Welldon's thinking on motherhood has, of course, been hugely important and all those of us working with mothers, whose difficulties have serious consequences for their children, owe an enormous debt to her. However, rather than a detailed discussion of current analytic thinking on perversions of motherhood or female narcissism, the primary aim of this paper was to draw attention to the need for treatments appropriate to this patient group and their children. Clinical examples given in the course of trying to make this case are thus set in the context of recent legal and policy guidance; doing justice to Welldon's work, it seemed to me, would not have been possible within the confines of this endeavour. I very much look