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The early years of life: psychoanalytical development theory according to Freud, Klein and Bion, by Gertraud Diem-Wille, London, Karnac, 2011, 276 pp., £22.99
In many ways this was an excellent book that at times moved me deeply. However, I also found myself often perplexed as to who would be the appropriate reader. In her preface, Margaret Rustin suggests that the author, Gertraud Diem-Wille, has written the book for a ‘wide audience of parents and others involved in bringing up children’ (p. ix). This prospective audience links with one of the implied aims of the book, which is to introduce those not ‘in the field’ to an idea of the ways in which psychoanalytic understanding can contribute to people's lives. In her preface to the English edition, Gertraud Diem-Wille explains why she has chosen to interweave observational and sessional material with theory.
The balance of examples from observed babies in ‘normal families’ and children in analysis is based on the conviction that the awareness of unconscious emotional patterns between parents and child can have a helpful liberating impact on people who work with children and parents.
This aim means at times she states views on what constitutes good parenting in a way that cannot help but be judgemental and that occasionally I found uncomfortable. However, the theory, drawing heavily on Freud, Klein and Bion is hardly that which, in my opinion the average parent, nursery worker or teacher would be able to connect to. Gertraud Diem-Wille also states in her introduction that the idea for the book arose out of lectures that she was giving to psychoanalytic candidates. Yet with that type of audience in mind I was unsure how much this book might seem rather too simplistic, too much of a relatively superficial introduction. I rather think that it is a book that, for its theoretical content, is likely to appeal to those who have an interest in psychoanalytic ideas, but are still at quite an early stage in their voyage of disco