This is a good primer written by a clinical nursing specialist in psychotherapy especially for student nurses, but also for other professionals beginning work in mental-health care, primarily relating to psychiatric establishments. Emphasis is placed on the mechanisms used in communication between mother and baby and their subsequent understanding and use in therapeutic groups. The book's main value is in its simplification of psychoanalytic concepts of early mental mechanisms, such as splitting and projective identification, and how they manifest themselves in groups in a psychiatric setting where boundary issues and clarification of roles are essential to management. The psychodynamic focus is vividly illustrated with clinical examples from the author's experience and linked to their sources in basic psychoanalytic texts.