Part 1 Introduction to psychiatry: coming to terms with childhood legacies; psychotherapy - a description and an explanation. Part 2 The inner world of the mind - how we relate to and cope with the outer world of the environment: conceptual thinking and feelings - conceptual thinking, feelings; consciousness and the unconscious - rationalization and repression; our sense of our own image, our identity; our differences in personality and character; morality, guilt and conscience; inherited abilities or drives - aggression destructive, aggression - constructive, sexuality, masturbation, frigidity and impotence, love, aggression and love, cruelty, jealousy. Part 3 Adverse circumstances in a child's life: loss of a parent - death, divorce, abandonment; separation, birth and other parting; pregnancy. Part 4 Children's responses to damage: stoicism; loneliness and solitude; addiction to alcohol and other drugs; hope; acting out for parents; delinquency and crime - kleptomania; depressive illness - treatment of depressive illness, suicide; psychosomatic disorders. Part 5 Analytical psychotherapy re-assessed. Appendices: how to obtain psychotherapy; useful addresses.