The author has dedicated this seven hundred fifty-six page book on his theory of maternal destructiveness to his women patients. It is divided into three parts: The Mother, The Child, and Treatment and Prevention.

In the preface Rheingold explains how he came to observe what is contained in his book. The book is the report of an experiment, 'not a designed piece of research—but what may be called an epistemologic experiment … to allow observations to take original form in a merging-of-consciousness psychotherapeutic procedure'. He 'wondered whether psychiatry could be served not only by structured research but as well by an expanded consciousness