Although this work has received recognition and acclaim from many in related professions, psychoanalysts appear to have overlooked it in spite of the author's basically psychoanalytic orientation. Because there has been a recent increase in interest among psychoanalysts in early cognitive development, a review seems pertinent despite the lapse of time since publication.

Using numerous clinical vignettes, Wyatt shows how normal language development cannot occur without the existence of a need-satisfying mother-child relationship as well as consistent mother-child interaction. The progression from earliest vocalizations to sentence production parallels the infant's maturation from imitation, to identification, to object relationship with his mother.