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This volume, the joint effort of a group of child analysts and analytically trained therapists working in Cleveland under the direction
of Dr. Anny Katan since 1951, is an important contribution to the problems of diagnosis and treatment of the child under five years of age. Although the study originally undertaken was to be a follow-up of the graduates of their Nursery School program, it was found necessary to describe the treatment methods used and to derive diagnostic categories suitable for assessment purposes. These tasks were divided among and written up by different members of the group. There is, in consequence, some unevenness both in the organization of the presentation and the level of theoretical discussion, although the clinical material is uniformly superb.
The results of the follow-up study consisted of these findings:
1The 'treatment via mother' method resulted in a favorable outcome in those children under five who had suffered from disturbances of greater severity than transitory developmental conflicts, but not a fixed neurosis or character disorder. (These children were last evaluated at the beginning of puberty.)
2It was necessary to modify certain categories in Anna Freud's Developmental Profile for diagnostic use in children under five years of age.
3The concept of motherhood as a developmental phase was found to assume central importance in the treatment of young children via the mother.
4A separate diagnostic category was necessary in order to accommodate psychosomatic disorders of young children.
These findings establish this young age group as one which requires unique diagnostic as well as therapeutic approaches in contrast to older children, facts that must be taken into account by those attempting to plan and execute diagnostic and treatment facilities for the child under five years of age, and for his parents.
The remainder of the volume is devoted to a description of the treatment method itself and to a presentation of detailed clinica