The Early Years of Life

This book provides a powerfully argued and beautifully constructed account of the early development of the child in the family context from a psychoanalytic perspective. It draws particularly on the theoretical trajectory from Freud to Klein and Bion. The growth of the child's mind is the story she wants to tell. The wealth of detailed examples drawn from the systematic observation of babies and young children, from more everyday observation of children's behavior in family and social contexts and from a range of clinical interventions draws the reader into a vivid understanding of the author's conceptual framework and provides many memorable vignettes of children's lives. The method of presentation, in which the descriptive material is followed by an interpretation of its psychological and developmental significance, offers the opportunity to immerse oneself in an account of the detailed play and interactions of a child with parents or therapist or other children and then to draw back and think about the complex processes one has been privileged to observe.