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This important book nudges the barriers of theory and practice. Of these the most important is the drawing together of several important themes in psychoanalysis and charting a renaissance in classical theory. What is particular is that the clinical material is largely based around a patient group descended from enslaved people from the Caribbean, who migrated to the United Kingdom three or so generations ago. The tools for working with this population are presented and consider a range of traditional therapeutic principles as well as new ones. The book introduces the important issues of separation and attachment, setting out the effects over several generations. We are reminded of the experience of generational transmission of trauma and loss and the way that we might be shown this by our patients' behaviour. Many of the clinical examples illustrate difficulties that patients have both in parent/child relationships as well as in loving couple relationships. Fletchman Smith refers to this as coupling, the coming together of women and men which was made especially difficult because of the rules on the plantation. She talks particularly about the mothering of black men and women and in turn the mothering of their own children and how the experience of slavery had a detrimental effect on this most intimate of relationships. She sees this as the beginning of the devaluing and rupturing of mothering and the important bonding with the infant which continued in post-slavery society. This usually privileged relationship was sacrificed for the master's need for women to toil in the fields. Bonding with babies and partners was forbidden; the enslaved did not own their bodies, affections or romantic desires. Loving connections between the enslaved was kept secret so that children would not know their fathers. The slaves learned that open relationships led to exploitation and manipulation by plantation managers, the whipping or selling of a loved one as punishment for a trouble