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Reviews the book, Psychoanalysis and infant research by Joseph D. Lichtenberg (1983). The burgeoning field of infant research has burst through the seams of our traditional view of infants. We now know that neonates are far more aware of their environment, more capable of eliciting responses from people, and more differentiated in their responses to caretakers and to a variety of external stimuli than we had ever believed. In part, this new knowledge has been gained through clever, creative experimentation by academic researchers. Experiments have been devised which are simple enough for neonatal responsiveness, yet offer relevant information about the infant's learning, cognitive, and emotional capacities. Joseph Lichtenberg's book, Psychoanalysis and infant research, presents this rich body of research. Were he content to offer us this new and absorbing view of the neonate, that alone would make the book interesting and worthwhile. Lichtenberg, however, is more ambitious. He sees important implications of infant research for various aspects of psychoanalytic theory and believes that a careful reading of the infancy data will "lead to reexamination of our theory" (p. 27). While the reviewer thinks there is much that infant research can offer to inform psychoanalytic theory, more empirical data are clearly needed from this area as well as from clinical research in the psychoanalytic setting. Lichtenberg deserves our gratitude both for calling our attention to some of the most important research findings that have emerged to date and for directing us to consider the implications of these findings for psychoanalytic theory and practice. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved) |
