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This book is one more volume in the growing literature which addresses the changes to analytic theory and practice demanded by experimental infant research. It is, so far as I know, the first of such volumes to be written by a Jungian, and it is perhaps noteworthy that the author comes from a classical tradition which has eschewed the role of infancy in the adult psyche. However those familiar with Jacoby's work will be aware that for several years now he has been trying to make a place in Jungian thought for the ‘observed infant’ of the infant experimentalists (Stern 1985). He is equally concerned to follow the implications of this into clinical practice, and draws attention to the need for Jungians to be aware of the importance of the infant's history and continuing infant needs of adult patients. In both respects, Jacoby is taking on the same two major concerns addressed by Michael Fordham over his long working life, about which I shall comment later on.
The book is divided into three sections. Part I is ‘About the psychology of the infant’, and begins with a re-evaluation of the meaning of the child archetype. Jacoby reviews the traditional understanding of it, and sets out the case that ‘the child motif, in its symbolism, must … be associated with the image of the concrete child; and above all, with the meaning and significance which the child's existence may have in the psyche of the adult’ (p. 4). This is his central argument, couched in classical Jungian terms and directed toward changing classical Jungian attitudes that favour the symbolic over the actual child in regard to this psychic theme.