The Significance of Infant Observational Research for Clinical Work with Children, Adolescents, and Adults edited by Scott Dowling and Arnold Rothstein Workshop Series of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Monograph 5. Madison, CT:  International Universities Press, 1989,  xvi + 257 pp., $32.50 Child and Adolescent Analysis: Its Significance for Clinical Work With Adults edited by Scott Dowling Workshop Series of the American Psychoanalytic Association, Monograph 6. Madison, CT:  International Universities Press, 1990,  xi + 232 pp., $30.50

These collected papers are based on a series of workshops sponsored by the American Psychoanalytic Association for mental health professionals. They provide a lively view of ongoing debates in the field and would be of interest to all psychoanalytic clinicians.

The format—presentations followed by discussion papers and then (in Monograph 6) replies from the presenters—allows one to follow the very real controversies and disagreements among contemporary psychoanalysts. The authors are to be commended for providing plenty of clinical material and addressing the many important questions that confront clinicians daily in their reconstructive thinking and choice of interpretations.

A central question is raised: In recent decades there has been increasing sensitivity to subtle transference phenomenon; how far is this derived from our observations of early mother-child relations or how far has this evolved from greater sophistication within the psychoanalytic process itself?

In the introduction to the fifth monograph, Phyllis Tyson refers to the two broad currents of infant research. One originates from within psychoanalysis in the effort to prove or disprove theory