This work by Lasch is an ambitious, always thoughtful, and at times brilliant delineation of a half-century of thought about a subject of great interest to psychoanalysts: the family. The book, an intellectual history, surveys American family studies by social scientists from the early twenties to the present. Lasch feels that the American tradition of family study has limited itself through its neglect of psychoanalytic concepts. He feels further that these studies, through their influence upon social workers, marriage counselors, and others, have contributed to the demise of the family in American society.

Implicit in this critique and perhaps far more interesting than the