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Can insights from infant psychiatry into the emotional life of infants and toddlers be presented to parents in order to help them toward sensitive nurturing? Stanley I. Greenspan and Nancy Thorndike Greenspan, in First Feelings: Milestones in the Emotional Development of Your Baby and Child (1985, newly available in Penguin Paperback, 1989), have set out to describe to parents the early stages of emotional development and the problems that can arise. Their ambition is worthy and vital, since most books for parents focus on cognitive, motor, and drive development rather than on emotional development per se.
The Greenspans focus on emotional development from earliest infancy, addressing the parents' roles in fostering healthy development. They optimistically may overestimate the psychological so-phistication, concentration powers, and anxiety-free curiosity of parents of young children, however, in their recommendations. I offered First Feelings as a gift to three friends. A psychoanalytic candidate, pregnant with her first child, enjoyed this book immensely and felt it helped her to grow in capabilities, while two other first-time mothers, each with advanced graduate degrees in