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This is a well-written book which uses knowledge of biology, anthropology, and sociology intertwined with a basic psychoanalytic view of individual development. The author, at the present time the Chairman of the Committee on Adolescence, Group for the Advancement of Psychiatry, is quite adept at extracting, summarizing, and utilizing references from these various fields. The style is adapted for interested members of the health, education, and guidance professions. At the same, time, this book helps to broaden the sexual education and the framework of the medical student and those in family practice, as well as residents in adult/child psychiatry.
Because of biological studies that indicate androgens are necessary for male differentiation, the author proposes that the young boy's envy of the caretaking maternal figures, especially his envy of their ability to propagate, is as difficult to resolve as penis envy in young girls, perhaps even more difficult. Gender differences are minimized in this book, in spite of the fact that there is no consensus at the present time in research studies.
From the psychoanalytic literature, the author selects strange bedfellows of an uneven caliber, with different frames of reference. He nevertheless uses them indiscriminately as authorities. For these reasons this book cannot be satisfactory to the psychoanalyst, although it may prove helpful to the related disciplines mentioned earlier.