Continuities and Discontinuities in Development: Edited by Robert N. Emde and Robert J. Harmon. New York and London: Plenun Press, 1984 pp. 418.

The genetic/developmental point of view in psychoanalysis contains the often overlooked premise that development proceeds both continuously and discontinuously. An example of developmental continuity is the theory of a continuous anxiety stream which alerts the ego to inaugurate defence. An example of developmental discontinuity is the theory that what evokes the signal anxiety changes across development: loss of the object, loss of the object's love, castration anxiety and guilt. Our theory holds that each succesive anxiety signal emerges as the consequence of new psychological structure not inherent in the prior organization.

Abrams elaborated this point in his paper 'Genetic point of view: antecedents and transformations' (1977, J. Amer. Psychoanal. Assn, 25:417–426) writing, 'There are two somewhat disparate groupings therein … One stresses understanding in terms of antecedent determinants; the second stresses developmental transformations, i.e. the influence of changing organization as a result of progressive and regressive processes.'

Robert N. Emde & Robert J. Harmon explore this developmental dualism in their new volume. This collection of 17 papers, only a few of which will be singled out for review, was compiled after a three-day retreat sponsored by the Developmental Psychobiology Research Group of Colorado Medical School's Department of Psychiatry.

In the introductory chapter, Emde & Harmon define discontinuities, '[as referring] to specific times of developmental transformations or change … times of qualitative shift with new patternings in behavior' (p. 2). 'Continuities refer to connectedness in development, to the linkage of early behavior to later behavior' (p. 3) including such diverse strands as temperament, cognition, symbolic play, attachment and emotional signalling in the mother-infant dyad and childhood psychopathology. And because a wide range in the scientific disciplines is represented in this research group—psychologists, psychiatri