Family, Socialization and Interaction Process: By Talcott Parsons and Robert F. Bales. With the collaboration of James Olds, Phillip Slater, and Morris Zelditch, Jr. Glencoe, Illinois: The Free Press, 1955. 422 pp.

For those familiar with the previous works1 of Parsons and his co-workers,

this volume—chiefly the work of Parsons—is a challenging, detailed extension of their theory into the process of the child's early social development. Some psychoanalytic concepts, cultural data (Zelditch), and studies of differentiation of roles in small groups outside the family (Bales and Slater), support the authors' analysis of the phenomena of ego differentiation and development and of the 'interpenetration' of personality and family 'systems of action' with the culture in which the child lives.

This is not an attempt to translate psychoanalytic findings into sociological term (a compulsive occupation in certain academic circles), nor to validate psychoanalytic concepts by nonpsychoanalytic methods (a more ubiquitous compulsion). In fact, Parsons is sufficiently acquainted with such fundamental psychoanalytic concepts as the phases of psychosexual development and narcissism, that he uses them to test his sociological hypotheses. He is not, however, uncritically accepting of psychoanalysis, and most psychoanalysts will take exception to certain points, particularly to his minimization of biological factors, and especially to his avoidance of the unconscious as an explicit entity. I would here remind the authors, as well as the psychoanalytic reader, that (as in the case of masochism and the death instinct) the psychoanalytic theory of ego development is not dependent on Freud's biological reconstructions. Even with such differences, Parsons' contribution in enriching our knowledge of the interaction of parent and child and