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Gertraud Diem-Wille, the author of this book, is a professor of psychoanalysis in education at the University of Klagenfurt in Austria and a training analyst of the Viennese Psychoanalytical Society, and her book has developed from her educational work in these settings. The aim of the book is to introduce the understanding of the early years of child development, as this has been informed by the tradition of psychoanalysis developed in Britain from Freud's work by Melanie Klein, Esther Bick, Wilfred Bion and their successors. There are three important fields of practice extensively referred to in Diem-Wille's account. The first is the method of psychoanalytic infant observation first pioneered in London by Esther Bick, to which the author has herself made a significant research contribution in her earlier ‘Follow-up study’ of observed babies and their families (Diem-Wille, 1997). The second is the clinical practice of parent-infant therapy through which developmental and mother-baby relationship problems are addressed. This is a moment in life in which short-term psychotherapeutic interventions can achieve remarkable outcomes. It is a practice which has been greatly influenced by psychoanalytic ‘infant observation’ and also has affinities with Donald Winnicott's approach to mother-baby consultation. The third context is the clinical practice of psychoanalysis with children. The Early Years of Life supports its argument with descriptive material taken from each of these contexts, and it is also illustrated by well-chosen photographs of babies and young children. Appropriate reference is also made to literary sources, in keeping with the broad aim of linking the discussion with readers' everyday knowledge and experience.
The author has many links with senior psychoanalysts and child psychotherapists in the British Psychoanalytical Society and at the Tavistock Clinic, and has worked in London. She is one of the leading interpreters of the British tradition of child psy