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In this volume, Prophecy Coles sets out to bring the dynamics around step-parenting out of what are asserted to be the shadows, to explore the origins of some of the myths which colour experiences in step-families and to establish the importance in therapeutic work of appreciating the power and enduring influence of step-relationships. It calls on ancient and more recent literature, fictional, biographical and of the self-help variety, in support of its arguments, and it represents a great deal of relevant and interesting scholarship in these areas.
The bulk of the early part of the book concentrates on the origins of mythology around the step-mother role and our cultural characterization of it. Coles shows how psychoanalytic theorizing (e.g. Bettelheim, 1976) has generally focused on how folk tales work at an unconscious level to elucidate internal dynamics. She argues that psychoanalysis has thereby overlooked the real social dynamics that the tales are bringing to our attention and has ignored their role in informing children (and adults) about actual family anxieties and concerns.
This follows a line already evident in Coles’ work - the emphasis on the wider influences on individual psychic development. She has written elsewhere effectively and innovatively about sibling dynamics and about the role of wet-nurses and nannies, arguing strongly that the core psychoanalytic focus on the nuclear mother/father/infant relationship has led to an underestimation of how vital the wider world is in its effect on the young child's internal dynamics. In this she joins a wider chorus of voices (e.g. ; Hopper, 2011) pointing out that social systems and ideas about the social unconscious need to be incorporated into psychoanalytic thinking. It is no longer, if it ever was, sufficient to think about the inner world as being contingent only on the individual family dynamics and internal oedipal struggles, as we become ever more aware of unconscious dynamics which are of much wider