Mrs Janis is an educationalist who has a special interest in the problems of mother-child separation. She also happened to have a close relationship with the family of Lottie, the two-year-old here studied, which put her in the position of ‘inside observer’ when the time came for Lottie to start at nursery school. From this fortunate position she describes Lottie's reaction to this ‘normal’ separation from her mother in graphic detail, using a psycho-analytic frame of reference, and is able to record aspects of the child's behaviour at home and in the nursery which are attributable to her separation anxiety.

On the basis of this material she formulates a number of hypotheses about separation anxiety which merit further investigation, and makes a suggestion about preventive policy, as follows: ‘Separation anxiety in young children may prove to be minimized by