The papers of this book arise from an international conference on Paranoia and Persecution held in London in 1995 to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Arbours Association. The stated aim of the book is ‘to propose new perspectives on the concept of paranoia and persecution' (General Introduction, paragraph 1). The book achieves this aim only in part—there are indeed some new perspectives, and interesting new light is cast on some aspects of the topic. Some of the perspectives, however, are by now well established, but even ‘old' perspectives are covered competently, and it is just as well to be reminded of the core concepts in the field. What the book does particularly well is to give a breadth of spectrum across the whole field. Hanna Segal at a recent book launch made the point that she dislikes the term ‘application' as used for some areas