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The research described in this book is based on theoretical formulations that arose from Sylvia Brody's 1956 study, Patterns in Mothering.1 In the volume reviewed here the authors present their recent concepts and the results of longitudinal observations of one hundred and twenty-two mother-infant pairs, designed to test those concepts.
Central to their thinking are the propositions that 'the emergence of the affect of anxiety and the beginning of ego formation take place in conjunction with one another, and that the two events flow out of a joint process … physiological arousals promote the exercise of perceptual and motoric structures, and … perception of the tension-states thus aroused, is reacted to with affect… Anxiety is one of the principal affects with which the ego is ushered into being; as the infant organism perceives some dystonic condition in his own body and perceives as well his own immediate, involuntary response to the condition, the ego is born and exercises a primary function' (p. 9). The primary organization of primary observations and the consequent control of function constitute essential mental processes that later will be absorbed by the ego: '… a psychic structure linked to behavior through the control of behavior'.
The degree of tension experienced by the infant is believed to promote or detract from his future optimal development. 'Optimal degrees of tension sufficient to motivate activity through which tensions may be discharged economically and pleasurably' are contrasted with 'unusual stress, with hypercathexis of pain, sensory discomforts, or a sensory confusion'. The former promotes sensory explorations, attainment of gratifications, and the development of curiosity while the latter cause a reduced readiness to perceive external stimuli and to organize perceptions. These propositions have particular bearing on the later described mother-infant relationships in which the mothe