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According to the Preface, this book collects under one cover the major papers of René Spitz in order to make them more available for health care professionals and developmental psychologists. One gathers the idea for the book arose in response to the dedication of the First World Congress of Infant Psychiatry in 1980 to the memory of Spitz. In addition to the 25 articles reprinted (six of them co-authored with various associates), there are brief but informative editorial comments by the Editor, Dr. Emde, setting the papers into historic or theoretical context, a descriptive list of the still available research films made by Spitz, and seven "commentaries" by contemporary researchers and clinicians on Spitz's contributions to their areas of expertise. The volume is a most fitting tribute. I had thought myself well acquainted with almost all of the included articles and expected I would be able to take a nostalgic journey through the volume while focusing primarily on the contributions of Dr. Emde and his panel of commentators; to my pleasure, I found that such a "concentrated dose" of Spitz's writings was, instead, an illuminating and provocative experience.
Part 1, not surprisingly, consists of Spitz's papers on maternal deprivation—the two on hospitalism, the two on anaclytic depression, and the one recounting how autoerotism is dependent on adequate maternal stimulation. These are probably Spitz's best-known works, and therefore hold few surprises for the well-read analyst. Though these articles describe pathological phenomena, the conclusions reached introduce Spitz's concepts of more normal mother-infant interactions. It is striking how his observations and the hypotheses he reached from them presaged those of Mahler, Kohut, and the infant psychiatrists.
The second section contains five articles in which Spitz's concept