A little more than half way through my reading of The Baby and The Bathwater, Dr Nina Col tart's life ended (24th June 1997). As a result, my relationship to the author markedly changed and it does not feel possible to simply review the book as I might otherwise have done.

All the papers in this book were written during the four years prior to publication, 1992-1996, with the exception of chapter one, ‘The Man with Two Mothers’. This was Dr Coltatt's first paper, read for full membership in the British Psychoanalytic Society in 1967. Introducing this paper almost 30 years later, she says she includes it ‘because I think it may be of interest at this point, when my writing life is coming to an end’. She says ‘I have retained my use of the present tense in describing the course of the analysis as, to my mind, since the analysis