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In psychoanalysis and infant research, Dr. Joseph Lichtenberg has taken on a challenging and important task, and succeeded admirably. As an infant researcher and recent graduate of the Denver Psychoanalytic Institute, I have special sympathy for the task Lichtenberg has set for himself, namely, to reconcile the differing points of view of the researcher and the clinician. Psychoanalysis and Infant Research presents a strong argument for the relevance of infant research for psychoanalytic theory and the need for clinical theory to take the newer findings into account. Clinicians reading this book will find an excellent review of infancy research data relevant to clinical and theoretical issues. Lichtenberg's summaries of the studies that have been done, and the implications he draws from them, are soundly based and consistent with the assumptions drawn by direct workers in the field. The degree of sophisticated understanding of infant research reflected in Lichtenberg's exposition is rare on the part of the clinician, and it is this combination which makes the book so valuable.
Because I am in such substantial agreement with Lichtenberg's ideas, I would like in this review to highlight a number of points he has made that I feel are of special importance and to expand on a few areas based on my own work in affect development in infancy.
One area in which infant research has traditionally been considered