The Vulnerable Child: Volume I edited by Theodore B. Cohen, M. Hossein Etezady, and Bernard L. Pacella Madison, CT:  International Universities Press, 1993,  xxiv + 275 pp., $40.00

I feel especially sad to review this excellent book. Between the time of publication and the time of this review, the American electorate decisively gave power to those whose stated aims include treating vulnerable children and their families as the enemies of “normal” Americans.

Psychoanalysis, and particularly child analysis, has been concerned with traumatized, disabled, and disadvantaged children, both for scientific research and to use psychoanalytic discoveries to help children who could benefit from a wide variety of interventions undertaken with psychoanalytic principles.

This is the first of what I hope will be a long series of collected papers from the Vulnerable Child Discussion Group of the American Psychoanalytic Association. Daniel Jacobs explains that the group, established in 1969 and meeting continuously since, has been composed of eminent researchers and clinicians who are engaged in studying

violence in children, the effect of divorce, vulnerabilities in reconstituted families, the efficacy of early intervention with infants, body image and internalization, issues of termination, and most recently, the effects of sexual and physical abuse. The discussions of the group have broadened

Page 619

to include more than the socially disadvantaged and now include development well beyond the first few years of life. Dr. Cohen's selection of topics remains designed to study the outside influences on internal structures. “We try,” he says, “to integrate classical psychoanalytic principles with newer research.” (p. xii)

In the introduction, “Children and the Mean-Spirited Time in Which They Live,” Cohen repeats the shocking statistics of poverty, homelessness, foster care, and infant mortality in the United States. He quotes Laurence Hartmann, president of the American Psychiatric Association: “We don't care for children as much as we say we do and as I see it, this not caring has risen to a level that is a scandal” (p. xiv).

In his conclusion, Cohen states (as the contri