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It is difficult to conceive that today, over thirty years after the publication of Freud's Three Contributions to the Theory of Sex, there can appear a book concerning the mutual relations of parents, child and siblings in which there is not one word of reference made to any dynamic emotional factors. Buehler explains
her approach when she states, … we are unable to accept the concepts and principles upon which their [psychoanalysts'] technique is based… We must and we want to limit ourselves to a much simpler procedure to find the purposes and attitudes contained in the child's contacts. In the present study, therefore, we have concentrated on those which were overtly expressed; even these have never before been studied.' She warns her readers not to expect 'new revelations concerning the relation between the child and his family' since her purpose is only to show that 'it is possible to describe in quantitative terms the atmosphere and basic structure of family-life'. This she proposes to do through the recording of overt behavior, classifying and tabulating it in order then to be able to formulate generalizations.
It is evident that Buehler is attempting to apply the same method of study which she used so successfully in her book, The First Year of Life. She seems, however, completely unaware that that method, derived from the field of animal psychology, is inappropriate, actually inaccurate when applied to the study of a more mature human being. Whereas the impulses of the infant are transformed into observable activity, it is part of the definition of increasing maturity that reactions become controlled, modified, postponed, not to mention inhibited or repressed, so that overt behavior may not be accepted as an expression of the true purpose or attitude of the individual. That such a seasoned psychologist as Buehler can overlook such a self-evident fact is distressing, especially since one has learned to respect the integrity of her work even though di