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In this rich and well-documented book the aim of the author is to integrate new findings about the first two years of life with psychoanalytic theory. ‘Analytic theory’, writes the author, ‘is based on data processed via symbolic representation. If a pre-symbolic mode of organisation persists in some clinical conditions, then an understanding of observations from the early period has direct immediate application’ (p. 213).
In my view this is Lichtenberg's basic approach, from which his interest in infant observation is derived. He is primarily a clinician, deeply rooted in the daily analytic practice. Basing himself upon up-to-date observational findings, collected by psychologists, neonatal specialists in research units and psychoanalytically oriented observers in the course of mother/infant interactions, he checks out traditional psychoanalytic theories. His research has several aims:
to validate, in the light of observed data, basic points of psychoanalytic theory;
to dismiss those which cannot be met by observable data;
to obtain new information which could enrich present and future analytic practice and theory.
He raises various questions about drive theory, ego psychology, object relations theory, affect theory. For example, he asks himself whether the economic view of drive discharge for tension reduction is really the primary principle regulating infantile life, or whether the genetic dynamic proposal, that the infant awakes to the world as a consequence of his need to satisfy instinctual drives, should be considered more valid today in the light of the collected observational data.
He states that it has now been observed that during waking states neonates do more than feed; they look. The act of looking manages even to interrupt a feed, distracting the neonate, who shows preference for different visual stimuli received.
In studying and comparing different methods of mother care it has been noticed by Thoman as well as by countless mothers that putting a crying bab