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This is the second published volume of papers presented at an ongoing discussion group of the American Psychoanalytic Association. As in the first volume and, indeed, in most such collections, the organization of the book seems to be based solely on the oral presentations, so that there are clusters of loosely related papers but little overall cohesiveness. The papers range widely in scope, scholarliness, and intent—from theoretical to anecdotal, from abstract explications to pragmatic reports on intervention programs. This array presents the reader with a useful overview of a variety of programs, research projects, theoretical controversies, and so on, all with the limitations inherent in a text prepared for oral presentation. Elaboration of ideas, findings, and the relationship of the various sections to one another is cursory, and the disparity among the papers in levels of abstraction, theoretical complexity, psychoanalytic sophistication, pragmatism, and sociopolitical agenda is dramatic and sometimes jarring. Nonetheless, a reader with interest in this field and especially one with curiosity about how analytically informed professionals attempt to implement their ideas in the harsh realities of the 90s will certainly find at least some of this volume thought provoking and enlightening.
The book opens and closes with remarks by Theodore Cohen, whose passion and commitment have sustained this study group for 30 years. His introduction and especially his concluding chapter deliver his urgent appeal to give the needs of children high priority; their current plight is documented by the disheartening 1994 Carnegie Report on the status of young American children. He observes (as do a few other contributors) that psychoanalysis has had a shrinking impact on policy, begging the painful questions: where