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The Psychoanalytic Study of the Child is our most distinguished reference for the year's contributions and achievements in child analysis. Volume 31 of this series is dedicated to René Spitz, who died in 1974. Spitz, a major contributor to the study of child development, was analyzed by Freud and influenced by Sandor Ferenczi, who was one of his teachers. The focus of Spitz's work was on the first year of life, which he studied in great detail.
This volume is divided into three sections: (a) theoretical contributions to problems of development, (b) clinical contributions, (c) applications of psychoanalysis. The authors are many, but in the first section it was Peter Bios who most held my attention. He is a long-time favorite of mine—psychoanalytic and profound. In his article he writes of the parental and environmental influences upon the adolescent. At times his presentation is almost poetic.
Unfortunately, many participants in these fights … (social, political, moral, ecological, etc.) turn out to be freeloaders, trapped in the self serving cause of laying the ghosts of their private past. Thus, having lost contact with the broader issues they profess to serve, they nonetheless give direction to the indecision of many who have come to an impass at the crossroads of late adolescence.
Blos addresses himself to the societal and peer-group environment as a source of activity (acting out) which can serve to bypass the maturational process and perpetuate infantile maladaptive patterns.
Also in the first section are two articles concerning the development of women, which are written by women. One, by Markowitz and Salo, is entitled “Some Comments on the Concept of the Negative Oedipal Phase in Girls” and the other, by Kaplan, is “Manifestations of Aggression in Latency and Preadolescent Girls.” Both articles review the concept of penis envy and its role in female development. In an article by Shapiro and Perry entitled “Latency Re-visited” Freud's view of the influences upon