Psychoanalytic process, as Eugene Mahon envisions it, is an odyssey through the mind of each of his analysands, the many children and adults he has treated over the forty years of his analytic practice. The painted guinea pigs of the title refer to three-year old children mourning their school pet. Who painted him? a child asks when a replacement pet of a slightly different color arrives in the school a few days after the death of the original pet, as if the dead can return from the grave after a paint job. This book is full of arresting images like this as the author explores many of the most basic, fundamental concepts of psychoanalysis e.g. repression, insight, transference, play, child analysis, working through, dreams within dreams, jokes, puns, parapraxes as well as the uncanny in dreams, screen memories, symptom, character and Freud s discovery of the Oedipus complex. This book is a highly original, creative psychoanalytic odyssey, a most intriguing psychological voyage you will not want to disembark from."

‘Many years ago in Mytherranea, before the stars had names, when daisies were still called days’ eyes, and the moon stayed up all night to keep the darkness company, there lived a race called redbits…’ So begins the tale of Rensal, a small creature trying to make sense of a big world. Running along one day, Rensal bumps into the Tall One, a wise and mysterious redbit who loves to talk. Over tea, toast, and berries, the friends discuss life, love, creation, dreams, death, and everything else that lies under the sun. This is a book that gets to the heart of what it is to be young, of the joys and sorrows and confusions of childhood, and of the questions that continue to be pertinent even when we are full-grown – how we live, how we love, and what – if anything – it all means.