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In a decade in which psychosomatic disorders are called psychophysiologic disturbances, when the psychiatric literature seems to indicate that psychoanalytic approaches to their treatment are outmoded, if not contraindicated, and when published studies emphasize possible physiologic mechanisms, biofeedback and behavior modification, it is perhaps timely that we are reminded of the ongoing interest that psychoanalysis has had in the poorly understood transitional area where the mental and the physical converge.
Psychosomatic Disorders in Childhood is not a definitive, balanced textbook as the title might suggest. It is a clinical psychoanalytic presentation of selected disturbances discussed emphatically from a defined, consistent point of view. The perspective employed is that of a busy, confident clinician interested in psychosomatic problems, an experienced psychoanalyst and child psychiatrist who was also a pediatrician and a teacher of psychoanalysis.
This work was edited after Melitta Sperling's death (in 1973) by her husband, Otto Sperling, who added a preface and three chapters. In its organization, Psychosomatic Disorders in Childhood is divided into: a preface; an introduction; and nine parts, which are in turn subdivided into twenty-five chapters. Otto Sperling's preface contains a sensitive tribute to Melitta Sperling's courage as a psychoanalytic