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Compared to The Origins and History of Consciousness, or to his writings devoted to the psychology of the feminine, Erich Neumann's last and unfinished work has had relatively little impact.
In a book review published in , K. Stierlin paid tribute to Neumann for his new insights into the earliest phase of child development and its significance, but he hardly touched on the most important passages devoted to the disturbances of the primal relationship (STIERLIN 23). Twelve years later, H. Dieckmann and E. Jung mentioned the book in a systematic description of analytical child psychology, placing special emphasis on Neumann's discussion of the Freudian concepts and his more comprehensive approach to development along Jungian lines (DIECKMANN, E. JUNG 5). By way of critical comments, Stierlin regretted the absence of reference to empirical family research data, while Dieckmann and Jung deplored Neumann's somewhat complicated terminology, which, they felt, continued to reflect ‘the creative dew drops from the birth of the magna mater’ instead of ‘the final and more sober formulation, the author probably had in mind’. No doubt both objections are related to the inevitably preliminary and even draft-like aspect of the book. In what follows I shall, however, attempt to show that ‘the creative dew drops’ are not merely an impediment to the interpretation of the text, but may even enhance the understanding of what is essential; that, moreover, the lack of empirical data, compared to the wealth of symbolical-mythological interpretation, is a shortcoming that is more relative than substantial.
The brief notes at the end of Neumann's book show that he was quite familiar with the research results of the British and American child psychologists (as well as the studies on animal behaviour); for he mentions John Bowlby (4), Eric H. Erikson (7), Adolf Portmann (20) and Niels Tinbergen (24). The fact that he does not dwell on them is probably due to the difference in the kind of experi