The Growing Consensus in Developmental Theory: A review of Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis by Peter Fonagy. New York:  Other Press, 2001.  261 pp. and Affect Regulation, Mentalization, and the Development of the Self by Peter Fonagy, György Gergely, Elliot L. Jurist, and Mary Target. New York:  Other Press, 2002. pp.  547.

AS SOON as you tell a group of psychoanalysts that there is a consensus on a topic, they will be inclined to point out the differences, for we are trained to uncover what is missing, inattended, repressed, dissociated. A careful reading of the recent developmental literature, however, impresses one more with the convergences in their findings and speculations than it does with the presence of divergences. And if you confined your reading to theories that focus on attachment, infant research, infant psychotherapy, and biological sources of such traits as affect regulation or proximity-seeking, the overlap would be impossible to ignore. The starting point of these theories is the mother-infant dyad (the word “mother” will substitute for caregiver in this review) as the primary developmental constellation and the focus is on the development of object relatedness, both internal and interpersonal. The emphasis on the mother-infant pair as the core developmental paradigm is, of course, not new. Decades ago, Ferenczi, Klein, Sullivan, Winnicott, Bowlby, and Balint, among others, postulated the primacy of the maternal dyad over the oedipal triangle. But obviously, none of them had research to substantiate their viewpoints and they rarely quoted one another or correlated their insights with the work of others (with the possible exception of Balint).

Peter Fonagy and several other contemporary theorists have done much to bridge the gap between seemingly diverse orientations. This sense of inclusiveness has been apparent at recent conferences on development where presenters” psychoanalytic affiliations are less important than the particular developmental literature to which they have contributed (attachment, infant psychotherapy, affect regulation, and so forth). In this spirit, Fonagy's Attachment Theory and Psychoanalysis is designed to compare and contrast attachment theory to a myriad of psycho-analytic