Clinical Studies in Infant Mental Health. The First Year of Life: Edited by Selma Fraiberg,1 with the collaboration of Louis Fraiberg. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1980. 279 pp.

Ever since The Magic Years charmed its way into our parental and professional hearts, each new book or article by Selma Fraiberg and her collaborators has been a special occasion. We have come to expect solid scholarship, ingenious investigative techniques, precise theoretical reasoning, and warm compassion, all presented in a spirited and lucid literary style.

Clinical Studies in Infant Mental Health continues this tradition. The studies reported here began in 1972 in the Child Development Project in Ann Arbor. They grew out of Professor Fraiberg's work with blind infants. The Infant Mental Health Program proposed to provide assessment and treatment services for "disadvantaged infants and their parents." The carefully documented development of these services would comprise the research component of the program. There would be no fees. For those who have worked with socially and economically disadvantaged, severely disturbed infant-mother pairs, the boldness implicit in such an invitation is impressive. This was not to be a survey or consultation service or a well-protected research study. Furthermore, there were no models for program development or for assessment and treatment methods, with the one significant exception of their own program for blind infants. With her small band of co-workers, Professor Fraiberg chose to leap straight into the vortex of the problem, inviting no-fee referrals from all agencies and hospitals of Washtenaw County. The expectable deluge of impossible cases arrived. Most were malnourished, developmentally retarded infants with depressed, angry, often teenage and