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This collection of clinical papers is welcome, both because of the variety of the cases presented and, more importantly, because many of the writers have recorded the analytic interplay in explicit detail. Thus, we are not—as too frequently is the case—presented with a mere description of the child's verbal and non-verbal communications and left to conjecture on the subsequent interpretative work, but can among these papers find a rounded account of the analytic dialogue and of the many-faceted analytic processes which take place between therapist and patient. Dr. Geleerd in the introduction comments that “detailed publication of the analytic treatment of a child or a phase of such an analysis can highlight some of the technical problems encountered in the analytic work with children. Dependent on the aim of the presentation, one can find in such a description many other aspects of the psychoanalysis of children, e.g. those pertaining to the unfolding of the analytic process, development of the transference, the interplay of defences, development of the superego, and object relationships.” The papers in this book cover all these elements in the psychoanalytic treatment of children and in the main demonstrate as well the careful and painstaking construction of the therapeutic alliance and the verbalization of the child's feelings in the here and now, both of which eventually facilitate the interpretation of transference manifestations and of repressed id material.
These papers range widely. There are two reports of treatment of under-fives by Grace McLean Abbate and John B. McDevitt; the former demonstrates the possibility of treating a three-year-old without the mother's active participation albeit with her co-operation, and explores the necessity of interviews with the mother, while the latter, in contrast, describes how the mother's presence in sessions may sometimes with immediate effect elucidate the ongoing material. From his account of a separation problem in a