You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
Professor at the University of Giessen and Director of the Psychosomatic Clinic, Richter bases his book on studies of families made by him and his co-workers in association with The Consultation and Research Institute for Mental Disturbances in Childhood of the Department of Psychiatry at the Free University of Berlin. The presentation is lucid, the case histories excellent, and the text displays a comprehensive knowledge of the German, English, French, and American literature. The first part is a sound exposition of psychoanalytic observations of parental influences relevant to the origin of neuroses in the child. This is followed by a detailed presentation of recent research in cultural anthropology, the study of twins, 'hospitalism', and 'family sociology'.
The author has directed his own studies to the various roles which can be imposed on a child by parental transferences and by narcissistic projections. The concept of the role is defined as the structured complex of unconscious expectations and fantasies which parents focus on the child. Psychoanalytic experience shows that unconsciously a parent may burden a child with the function of serving as his representative in solving his own conflicts. A description and classification of various such roles is presented, based on Freud's types of object choice. Richter states, for example, as typical of roles traumatic to the child: the child is substituted for (a) a parental figure; (b) for the mate; (c) for a sibling.
In the second part, the child's plight is described when he serves as surrogate for some aspect of the parental self: (a) a simple reflection of the parent: (b) of the parent's ego ideal; (c) of his negative identity (scapegoat); (d) as the 'disputed ally'.
Each clinical chapter is provided with one or two illustrative case histories and followed by a discussion. The last chapters describe the limits of the model and the effects in adult life of the childhood experiences.
This is an important con