Psychoanalysis of Developmental Arrests: Theory and Treatment. Robert D. Stolorow and Frank M. Lachmann. New York,  International Universities Press, 1980,  viii + 211 pp.

Within the broadening scope of psychoanalysis, and its employment in the treatment of severe characterological, narcissistic, borderline and even psychotic disorders, there has been a pervasive interest in preoedipal factors and the developmental aspects of early object relations. In this elegantly and concisely written book, Drs. Stolorow and Lachmann have presented a lucid and provocative position of their thesis that one must “distinguish between psychopathology that is the product of intrapsychic conflicts and psychopathology from the remnants of developmental voids, deficits and arrests.” Many of their ideas are clearly consistent with those of Kohut, but presented in a less polemical and more articulate manner than those in his latest books, or the texts of his disciples. The conciseness of the presentation and its overall clarity make this book an invaluable heuristic guide for the beginning therapist, and of vital interest to the experienced clinician, for whom there may be many reservations over details.

The book is divided into three sections. The first is a review of the literature on narcissism and interferences with the consolidation of self representation. The second section reexamines the concept of defense within a developmental framework, contrasting it with intrapsychic conflict in the classical sense. In the third section they use these contrasting criteria to evaluate a number of familiar neurotic symptoms.

Principally using the work of Pulver, the authors discard drive theory as a “hypothetical flow of psychic energies” and prefer to focus on the clinically observable multiple determinants of mental activity, in the process offering a functional definition of narcissism:

Mental activity is narcissistic to the degree that its function is to maintain the structural cohesion, temporal stability and positive affective coloring of the self representation.

Consequently a narcissistic object relation is one that attempts to fulfill the above function and p