This book is intended to spell out the long-lasting significance of the reciprocal gaze between mother and infant. The importance of the face-to-face experience for the very young infant has now been documented for several decades. Wright has chosen to elaborate on its subjective meanings for the infant and on how it enables the child's eventual separation from the mother; attachment to her; and, in turn, language development, feelings of self, symbol formation; and ultimately the capacity for creativity. Vision, he says, bridges the space between mother and infant and makes gradual separation from the mother bearable, that is, not injurious to the infant's well-being. Wright makes much use of Winnicott's ideas and reinforces them with references to statements of prominent authors in the fields of linguistics, philosophy, sociology, literature, and branches, but not the root, of psychoanalysis. He wishes to remind us about relations between infantile experience and later