Epilogue

Gedo's review of Lichtenberg's clinical vignettes is a fitting close to the commentaries in this issue, because it reminds us once more that Lichtenberg is first and foremost a clinician, and his immersion in the experimental and observational literature of infant research was undertaken with respect to clinical goals. It is to his great credit that, in the course of this undertaking, he has initiated an exchange among developmentalists, theoreticians, and clinicians of various persuasions. By taking a pioneering first step in showing how new insights into early development bear on psychoanalytic practice, he has provided new and compelling evidence in support of the timeworn psychoanalytic belief that assumptions about development and issues of therapy go hand in hand, being, in the end, two sides of the coin. That his theory of therapy should be critically probed by a theoretician of the stature of Friedman will probably bother him no more than the fact that his technical recommendations should be wrestled with by a clinician of the stature of Gedo. But then I suspect he would be equally pleased that his cautious developmental constructions have been subject to amplification by researchers such as Gaensbauer, Stechler, and Dowling, energetically contested by Demos, and contrasted with separation-individuation theory by Bergman and Pollens. In the end, he should be content with Basch's verdict, seconded by Friedman and Gedo, that he has indeed put his finger on the big questions confronting psychoanalysis and infant research, inviting a dialogue from which all are bound to profit.