Assoc. Prof. Sally Swartz has just published her new book Ruthless Winnicott: The role of ruthlessness in psychoanalysis and political protest. Published by Routledge, the book is an extended exploration of the role of ruthlessness in psychic development. That survival is of no use unless it is preceded by a ruthless attack is one of D. W. Winnicott’s most resonant paradoxes. The book links this with the search for subjective freedom for those traumatized by colonialism, and in doing so draws on the work of Algerian psychiatrist and revolutionary psychoanalytic thinker Frantz Fanon.