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There has been a great need in child psychiatry and psychoanalysis for comprehensive overviews, complete with case material, of the behavioral, characterological, and neurotic disordered diagnostic entities. This work helps to fill that void. Adams smoothly portrays the multifaceted obsessive-compulsive disorders in childhood, describes the normal developmental manifestations of obsessive-type behavior in the child interacting with, and being altered by, the environment, and depicts the evolution into varying degrees of psychopathology. The reader is treated to a critical review of the literature pertaining to the family study of the obsessive and to a deft outline of the approaches and theoretical positions of the various psychoanalytic, behavior modification, communications, eclectic, and organic deterministic schools.
The sociopsychiatric approach utilized by Adams was developed by Bingham Dai, a psychoanalyst heavily influenced by Harry Stack Sullivan and Karen Horney. It centers on examining the roots of deviant, in this case obsessional, behavior, emphasizing the impingement of family and society on the developing child. It takes into account family patterns, the culture and how it is defined by the child, and how the child perceives himself and his worth as a person. This approach is carried through in a lucid, systematic manner. The demographic findings of the forty-nine families studied are neatly outlined and give a cross-sectional view of Middle America from the 1950's to the 1970's. Attitudinal climates found in the homes included miscommunicating, misinforming verbalization; devaluation of physical activity; high valuation of etiquette and conventional correctness; encouragement of social isolation or withdrawal; emphasis on cleanliness; adherence to an instrumental morality; derogation of maleness; and religion practiced on the basis of limited commitment.
The book contains an overall description of the children plus individual presentations of each of t