In a groundbreaking integration of the work of Lacan, Winnicott, and Tustin, Catherine Mathelin reveals how a child's symptoms can be a striking reflection of its parents' unresolved conflicts. She shows how her patients' art, much of it reproduced here, can communicate both initial anguish and progress in treatment, and draws on her experience of working on a neonatal unit to argue compellingly that a child's mental health can be endangered even before birth.

"This is a book hard to put down, filled with the most fascinating brief case vignettes of parents and children who live in worlds disconnected from each other, hoping for experts to heal their suffering."
-Anni Bergman, coauthor of The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant