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This richly detailed and very readable book offers a great deal more than the title indicates. Part I provides a full account of the setting and work of the Hanna Perkins Mother-Toddler Group together with details of the Toddler Profile, based on Anna Freud's Provisional Diagnostic Profile for older children; Part II, the longest section of the book, offers the findings of the observational research into toddler development and elaborates the central thesis, namely, the way in which the mother-child relationship can facilitate or impede the toddler's development; and Part III illustrates the importance and usefulness of disseminating the understanding gained from psychoanalytic research amongst other professionals who work with children.
The book is not only extremely informative but is also very enjoyable. The author's sensitivity and empathic understanding of toddlers and their parents shines through each page, and somehow also affects the reader, making the book an emotionally satisfying experience as well as an intellectually stimulating one. In the author's responsiveness, one has the experience of being ‘felt with’, a phrase which she uses repeatedly to describe the vital essence of the mother's developing relationship with her toddler.
My initial feelings, as I opened the book, however, were less than enthusiastic. The first section, with its frequent references to the very detailed appendices, seemed somewhat tedious and laborious. But as time went on I felt increasingly drawn into the author's exposition of her argument, and when I reached Part II, I found myself referring back to Part I, grateful then for the detailed account of the philosophy underlying the organization the Hanna Perkins Toddler Group. On reading Part I, I had had serious misgivings over the apparently far too structured, even strict regime of the Toddler Group, with its emphasis always on mastery of ego functions, and had begun to feel rather sad for the little children who seemed to be ha