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Under the auspices of the Psychoanalytic Research and Development Fund, seventeen child and two adult psychoanalysts met monthly over a five year period to discuss cases. Rather than systematically surveying “the many meanings” with topics preselected according to an overall blueprint, each participant was
asked “to prepare a chapter based on his curiosity, imagination, and psychoanalytic experience” (p. 5). The result is a rather free wheeling, diverse potpourri of essays which, with few exceptions, cleave to classical notions of development. Many of the essays are couched in the language of instinctual discharge, pleasure principle versus reality principle, and so forth, which I find problematic. No doubt, the material of child analysis, especially during the oedipal period, lends itself all too easily to conceptualizations within the framework of instinct theory. If such theory no longer appears to have any claim on us as a valid scientific construct, however, it becomes necessary to reconceptualize certain phenomena. The present volume does not do this and the kind of translation I refer to awaits the efforts of future authors.
Nonetheless, several authors break new ground, struggling with issues on the cusp of our understanding, in particular Herzog, on trauma and enactment, and Dahl, on gender identity development. And among the other essays, the varied, rich descriptions of child analytic case work represent a treat for the reader, especially adult analysts and others who have not had the good fortune to do child analysis. For the cases are a tantalizing view of a rich world that we can only admire and envy. The creativity of the child analytic endeavor brings into bolder relief Winnicott's (1968) statement that “psychoanalysis has been developed as a highly specialized form of playing in the service of communication” (p. 593). We have much to learn from child analysts in the carrying out of the adult analytic endeavor, and the exposure to the work in this v