As the editor Elizabeth Spillius writes in the preface to this book, Alessandra Piontelli “does something no one has done before”. Piontelli trained in medicine, neuropsychiatry and child therapy. Piontelli, using the infant observation methods pioneered by Esther Bick, applied them to prenatal life. Over several years, as part of a research project, she observed the ultrasound scans of unborn children and gained expertise in ‘reading’ them. She gained knowledge of the continuity between states in pre- and post-natal life. After having published papers on her findings (The International Review of Psychoanalysis , , )