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Hanni Mann-Shalvi's From Ultrasound to Army is an important and original book, its title one of the most arresting in recent years. We know of nothing like the book in scope and ambition, as it examines the development of Jewish Israeli boys and men from conception to young adulthood. Mann-Shalvi's original research, conducted fourteen years ago in fulfillment of a doctorate in psychology and several years before qualifying in psychoanalysis, focuses on the parenting experience of a group of twelve couples studied intensively. She supplements her understanding of problems in the development of their sons by drawing on her current clinical experience as a psychoanalyst treating adolescents and young adults presenting the kind of developmental problems identified in her research. She draws heavily on other research into trauma and development, studies of Israeli and worldwide war trauma and its sequelae, her far-reaching knowledge of Israeli culture, and the psychoanalytic and developmental literatures, in order to convey the sweep of issues concerning masculine development in this war-torn and trauma-conscious country.
The book is divided into two major parts, the first presenting the author's basic research and the second on development and family dynamics; a third part provides a short coda on psychoanalytic interventions ameliorating the trauma of men who have grown up in a war-conscious society in which they have always expected to become soldiers. The book's first section could usefully have been 50 percent shorter and would have read more easily. An editor's strong hand would have been useful here to avoid repetitiveness in the narrative. Nevertheless, the accumulated impact of intense, direct speech from the various couples yields a convincing picture of the wearing emotional life of the parents of Israeli sons.
In Part 1, Mann-Shalvi sets the scene by recounting her own profoundly distressed experience of sending her eldest son off to the army. After eightee