Parens and Saul have written a very thoughtful book about a complex topic. The book is divided into three parts: a study of Freud's writings, theoretical considerations, and clinical considerations. Dependence is recognized as one of the significant human conditions, observed and formulated more clearly in the earlier years of life. Terms such as 'dependence in man' or 'object relations' refer to so many multiple variables and to so many changes through a lifetime that a book on such issues may easily suffer because it cannot be sufficiently outlined in all its details. As psychic structure becomes more and more complex, aspects of dependence are then coördinated with structure formation and its theoretical propositions. It seems that one cannot address oneself to dependence in man as if this were a 'unit of behavior'; instead one must define the variables as they emerge during development.

It is the more surprising how well the authors fare—in the review of Freud's writings on this subject and in the discussion of