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This book is an ambitious attempt to delineate the development of human personality. A listing of the criteria for the healthy personality
is given, and the various developmental life stages are then described with their respective tasks and requirements from the environment, as well as the influences that make for maladaptation. There is a presentation of conflict, defense, and symptom, eclectically conceived but essentially drawing on classical dynamic concepts. The authors attempt to explain some pressing current, socially expressed problems, such as violence, the disaffection of the young, and the sexual revolution.
For the lay reader, eager for quick solutions and uncomplicated 'understandings' the book is enlightening and reassuring. It gives explanations that are persuasive; it gives the feeling that these matters, individual and social, are understood and can be influenced. The tone is optimistic. The authors provide guidelines: for parents at each stage of parenthood; and for the individual's progress toward greater maturity: self-observation of causes for anxiety and lowered self-esteem, and in interpersonal relations; study of one's own dreams and of one's own resistances to the insights acquired. Even with the obvious limitations that these suggestions carry—which the authors mention—they will surely be welcomed by the lay reader. The authors unmask the lifelong 'deprived' whiner, and reassure the 'guilty' parent.
The professional reader, however, will have many reservations. Mainly, there is a frequent gap between the dynamics one can easily infer on the one hand, and what is offered as understanding and explanation of the illustrative case material on the other. For example, in the case of Roger (pp. 113-114),—where the patient's symptoms of passivity, homosexual fears, tendency to ingratiation, and discomfort with women appear to be products of guilt over his wish for (and contribution to) his mother's seduction of him and over his obvious