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This book is an impressive collection of papers on loss, mourning and melancholia. Although the book's focus is on couples and loss, it is highly relevant for clinicians working with individuals as well as families. Clinically useful theories are clearly
described, including some which may be new to UK readers. Many rich clinical examples illustrate the complexity of loss and confirm its central place in understanding human experience.
During the writing of this book, I suspect that the prospect of a pandemic, such as the one we are currently in, was very far from the authors' minds. Loss is everywhere, not only through the deaths of those young and old, but also due to the deleterious effects of the virus itself. Being unable to be with those who suffer or pay our final respects to the dying has added significantly to the complications and trauma of Covid. The pandemic has meant the loss of so many other aspects of our way of life, such as coming together with family, friends and colleagues; loss of jobs, income, cultural and sporting events, weddings and funerals. Published before the full extent of Covid and its variants could have been imagined, this book is even more timely because of the global crisis. One might say that uniting across the world has never been more necessary than now in this current pandemic, and in this regard, the book brings together authors who cross several continents, namely Europe, Australia and South America.
In terms of the book's theoretical stance, the chapters interweave object relations theory with the concept of the link or Link Theory, known as ‘El Vinculo’. This is a concept less familiar to UK psychoanalytic practice and likely to be new to some readers. The chapters course their way through many different aspects of loss, for example, the impact of loss through death, the ending of a relationship, loss of wishes and dreams, of youth, as well as the intergenerational aspects of loss. Clinical examples throughout the book illus