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It is disquieting that the editors of this volume do not make explicit in their separate prefaces that the essays collected therein were,
with one exception, presented at a conference sponsored by the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and subsequently published in Daedalus (Fall, 1971, Volume 100, Number 4) at a cost of $2.50 per copy. And shouldn't the editors have expended some effort in an attempted synthesis of these diverse essays? Translation of different professional languages, separation of latent and manifest content, differing frames of references, assessing form versus content, are, for example, tasks that might have rendered this volume into a cohesive book. Critical questions might have arisen by the juxtaposition of the material which could lead to further study or research. Are they really describing the same phenomena? The parable of the blind man examining the different parts of the elephant comes to mind.
Sampling the contents, we find that J. M. Tanner discusses the physical changes that occur in early adolescence and we note that, although not new, his material is still important. Peter Blos, Sr., presents a concise summary of his psychoanalytic formulations on the subject of the early adolescent and briefly attempts to place this developmental stage in the context of what went before and what comes after. It is interesting to note that these two were the only contributors to explore explicitly sex-linked differences. It is true that John H. Gagnon, in his essay, The Creation of the Sexual, approaches the differences. But his approach is more in terms of sociological description and data from questionnaires. His material fairly cries out for a bridge to the intrapsychic; without it, the material appears to this reader as superficial and descriptive. Edward C. Martin writes of his personal observations of this age group as seen through the eyes of the junior high school teacher and sympathetically describes the early adolescent's v