Abstract Book reviewed in this article:La adopción: Un tema de nuestro tiempo [Adoption: A contemporary topic] edited by Milagros Cid and Silvia Pérez‐GaldósLa peau [The skin] Edited by Gérard SzwecEntrevista e indicadores en psicoterapia y psicoanalisis [Interview and indicators in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis] by Antonio Pérez SánchezThe art of interpretation: Deconstruction and new beginning in the psychoanalytic process by Wolfgang Loch, edited by Peter WegnerPsychoanalytic collisions by Joyce Anne SlochowerPsychodynamic diagnostic manual by the PDM Task Force Vulnerabilità alla psicosi [Susceptibility to psychosis] by Franco De MasiSaber y no saber: Curiosidad sexual infantil [To know and not to know: the sexual curiosity of children] by Mariela Michelena

In this paper, the author revisits the problem of ‘premature ego development’ first introduced by Melanie Klein in 1930. She also highlights several developments in post‐Kleinian thinking since the publication of that paper, which can be seen as offshoots of or complements to Klein's work. The author proposes a link between this category of precocious development and the absence of the experience of what Bion termed the ‘containing object.’ She puts forward several technical considerations relevant to analytic work with patients who suffer as a result of early developmental failures and presents various clinical vignettes in order to demonstrate the ways in which these considerations take shape in the analytic setting.

Neuroscience indicates that ‘repetition’ is fundamental to brain function. The brain non‐consciously predicts what is most likely to happen and sets in motion perceptions, emotions, behaviors and interpersonal responses best adapted to what is expected‐before events occur. Predictions enable individuals to be ready ‘ahead of time’ so reactions occur rapidly and smoothly when events occur. The brain uses past learning as the guide for what to expect in the future. Because of prediction, present experience and responses are shaped by the past. Predictions from early life can be deeply encoded and enduring. Predictions based on the past allow for more efficient brain function in the present, but can lead to mistakes. When what is predicted does not occur, consciousness can be engaged to monitor and correct the situation. But if a perception or emotion seems reasonable for the situation, a person might not notice an error, and a maladaptive ‘repetition’ may remain unchanged. The author discusses how predictions contribute to psychological defenses and transference repetition, and how conscious self‐reflection facilitates therapeutic change. The neuroscience of prediction indicates why, in certain cases, active engagement by the analyst may be necessary. The author makes the argument for use of a ‘neuroscience interpretation’.

Austen's extraordinary realism in depicting the dynamic internal processes which follow on the heroine's loss in Persuasion becomes clear in the light of a psychoanalytic understanding of mourning. Persuasion dramatizes the effects of a mother's death in adolescence as these come into play at the time of the heroine's separation from her fiancée and her later mourning. The thesis of this paper is that, despite falling in love with the brilliant hero, an unfinished mourning and an unconscious identification with her dead mother helped to persuade the heroine Anne Elliot to break her engagement, to create a ‘final parting’ as her mother had done to her in dying. The heroine's internal monologues show that she has projected some of the darker feelings of mourning, her anger and resentment, on to the hero and that she reopens a complex mourning process, partly through the displacement of affect, showing how traumatic effects of loss can be worked through in deferred action, effecting positive psychic change.