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This book, by Dr. Solomon, Assistant Clinical Professor of Psychiatry in the University of California, attempts a synthesis of human thinking from birth to old age. For the author 'the ego is a development of the "meaning of things", or in short, conceptual thinking' (p. 4). Perception being defined as sensation plus memory, perceptual thinking corresponds to non-verbal thinking and ego development depends upon the transition, via the acquisition of language, from non-verbal to conceptual thinking.
Many readers will question the adequacy of such an exclusively cognitive key to the many-sided problems of human behaviour, but, for the author, it is a clue that has led him to codify his views in a Table of Ego Organization (pp. 8–9). This table lists nine Maturation Phases from Infancy to Senescence; the typical characteristics of each phase are given in five columns: Psychosexual Stage, Principal External Objects, Mature Ego, Superego Reactions, Neurotic Ego Traits. The Psychosexual Stages of Infancy and Toddlerhood, Early- and Late-Perceptual and Early- and Late-Conceptual, here replace the old libidinal oral and anal stage classification. Unfortunately an undetected printer's error in the table gives the first Toddler phase, which should obviously be 'early-conceptual' as a second 'early-perceptual'. Since the table is intended for constant reference, it is rather a pity this mistake escaped notice in the proofs.
The most useful part of the book is probably not the table or the theory but the wealth of descriptive material and the sensible discussions of human problems at different age periods which are 'mainly an outgrowth of my own twenty-seven years of training and experience, not only in psycho-analysis but also in pediatrics, child guidance, and hospital psychiatry'. This should be useful to students in any profession directly concerned with human welfare.
The author has been considerably influenced by Hartmann, but is one of the few American psycho-analys