Bringing Up Baby

This is an important text that synthesizes diverse literatures and theories on infant development into a coherent framework that illuminates the essence of infancy for all those who have infants, study infants, teach about infancy, make policy with respect to infant welfare, and work medically or therapeutically with mothers and their infants. It brings together in one volume the principal theories of infant development, beginning with Freud's vision of the Oedipal infant, moving through the post-Freudian conceptualizations of the infant of Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, and the British Independents with Donald Winnicott as exemplar, then to the attachment theorists, the intersubjective theories, the cognitive developmental psychologists, examining the work of Jean Piaget and the neo-Piagetian cognitive theorists, and then concluding with the modern infant of developmental neuroscience and an examination of the neurobiology of attachment, stress, and care giving. This is a book of depth and breadth that makes the infant come alive in the minds of readers. It challenges cherished beliefs about the nature, capacities and developmental pathways travelled by infants into childhood and beyond and argues that our inner infant is never far from our adult selves. It will be useful for students of psychology, psychotherapy, child care and education; psychologists; social workers and infant and child policy makers; psychiatrists; and parents and anyone who has an interest in finding out what infants think and feel and how they relate to their world.