The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child, Volume VIII: New York: International Universities Press, Inc., 1953. 412 pp.

These twenty-two papers vary markedly in their approach to the development and behavior of the child. All the contributions are valuable; only a few can here be singled out for mention.

Western Reserve University initiated a new medical curriculum in 1952. The fortunate student begins his medical training by being introduced to an expectant mother in a prenatal clinic, attends her during pregnancy and delivery, and follows the newborn and its family as long as the student remains in medical school. Anna Freud's address to the first group of students to begin such training constitutes the brief opening paper of this volume. In a splendidly lucid and succinct presentation, Miss Freud remarks upon the meaning and importance of the phenomena the students will observe in the unfolding of the infant's emotional development during the first year of life.

This exciting trend toward study of the child as part of its environment is carried on by The Child Study Center of Yale University. By longitudinal studies in a nursery school, Coleman, Ernst Kris, and Provence clearly demonstrate that attitudes of a parent vary with the developmental progress of the child and with the impact of the changing behavior of the child upon the parent. Such terms as rejecting, overprotective, punitive, hostile, so frequently applied to parents, are misleading if not understood as describing changing reactions to the child's changing behavior.

Six papers evidence the great interest in 'ego pathology'. In a metapsychological study of schizophrenia, Hartmann stresses 'the common economic aspect' of the defenses and object relationships. Ego functions are not only dependent upon neutralized libido for their source of energy, but also require neutralized aggressive energy. Workable defenses require aggressive energy in its neutralized form to maintain countercathexes. Capacity for such neutralization