Early Adolescence and the Search for Self. A Developmental Perspective: By Douglas Schave and Barbara Schave. New York: Praeger. 1989. Pp. 161.

Douglas and Barbara Schave have written a very intriguing book in which they identify early adolescence as a specific separate phase of development. What makes the book particularly interesting is its uniqueness in dividing adolescence into just two stages, early adolescence and adolescence proper. It is during the early stage that they place much of the turmoil of post-childhood development. Actually, they have taken the few years that we usually refer to as pre-adolescence or pre-pubescence and combined them with the pubescent adolescent years into their newly identified 'early adolescent stage'. They also combined the middle and late stages of adolescence into 'Adolescence proper'. However, it is the way in which they have conceptualized this 'Early adolescent' developmental period that, as the Schaves put it, gives it its new perspective as part of a developmental line.

The authors have obviously had much experience with children of the early adolescent age group and have given much thought as to what makes these children 'click'. As a result they place major emphasis on the psychological changes taking place during this period of life as compared with either latency or adolescence proper.

The book is written primarily from the points of view of two theoretical frameworks of psychological thought, namely Self Psychology (Kohut, Wolf, M. Tolpin, etc.) and the Cognitive Psychology of Piaget. The Schaves lean very heavily in their own thinking towards self-psychology theory as the basis for their particular perspective regarding the development of adolescent psychic structure. However, they often interchange the term psychic structure with the phrase 'a set of organizing principles'. In actuality the Schaves combine several developmental lines into their theoretical framework of early adolescent development. For instance, in a timely manner they introduce new ideas regarding affect and cognition, interacting, but neither holding dominance over the other. I