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This book records the author's attempt 'to discover, through the study of aggressive behaviour in children, how the self-assertive urge, on which the survival of the individual depends, becomes deflected from creative to destructive ends, and how it is again re-directed into constructive channels'. Dr. Jackson claims to have successfully split the concept of aggression into positive and negative forms. Numerous examples of aggressive and destructive behaviour in neurotic, delinquent, and normal children are given, compared, and presented statistically. The author has devised a pictorial projection test of family attitudes, which is also described. She relies on this material to substantiate her conviction that there exists in the child a single instinctual urge, that of 'aggressive self-realization'. In her view there exists no dualism of instincts, and presumably therefore no possibility of the mitigation of hatred by love. Dr. Jackson believes that the child is not innately 'negatively' aggressive but becomes so through rigid and unsympathetic handling, i.e. if its self-assertive urges are misdirected, especially owing to the conscious or unconscious negative attitudes of the mother. Notwithstanding all this the author's psychological vocabulary embraces many psycho-analytical terms and concepts. In view of this and since she is so interested in the study of aggression in children it is surprising that, although she refers to the ideas of many psychologists and psycho-analysts, she ignores the writings of Melanie Klein.