The Technique of Child Psychoanalysis. Discussions with Anna Freud: By Joseph Sandler, Hansi Kennedy, and Robert L. Tyson. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1980. 277 pp.

This excellent book about the practice of child psychoanalysis came to be assembled and written in a unique way. Under the chairmanship of Joseph Sandler and using the case material on the subject of the treatment situation and technique as it is recorded in the Hampstead Psychoanalytic Index, a study group was formed that met weekly for two years. Anna Freud participated in all of the meetings, and all of the discussions were tape recorded and transscribed. This book, arising from the transcriptions, is a distillate of the experience of child psychoanalysis as it is done at the Hampstead Child Therapy Clinic. Miss Freud's comments on a broad range of technical subjects, included verbatim in the book, add immeasurably to the work. They are integrated with the text, most often clarifying the abundant clinical examples which have been used to illustrate the points under examination.

The book provides very interesting reading, in that readers can feel they are participating in the ongoing study and can compare their own ideas with the views at Hampstead. It is designed to be read by those who have an understanding of psychoanalytic concepts as well as a familiarity with age-specific psychosocial and psychosexual development. The book, like the Hampstead Clinic itself, has grown out of the work of Anna Freud. It reflects her perspective that childhood disturbances are deviations from the path of normal development and that psychoanalysis in appropriately chosen cases can restore the child to a normal track.

The book is divided into five parts, each of which is further subdivided into chapters dealing with specific technical issues. The titles of the chapters are actually headings of clinical significance in the Hampstead Psychoanalytic Index. At the beginning of each chapter, there is a note describing how the topics are to be reported for use in the Index for each case included.