Christiane Olivier, identified on the dust jacket only as "an analyst in Aix-en-Provence," has written a mostly polemical but ultimately timely book exploring the effect of mothers on their children. Several liberties need to be granted the author and her translator at the outset, however, to make this book readable. Among the many textual idiosyncrasies are a profound disregard for accurate references ("Mme. Olivier sees pedantry as a characteristically male trap," explains her translator [p. 150]); a tiresome and often vitriolic prose style; and a few egregious editorial blunders (e.g., "Bella Grumberger" cited for Béla Grunberger, and referred to as "she" [p. 37]).

These difficulties reflect the author's determination to bring a strongly feminine "language" into psychoanalytic writing by pitting