558 Book Reviews

The teacher-moms were volunteers chosen from successful mothersfrom a broad cross-section that can be found in any suburban com­munity. A chapter, which will be excellent reading for people work­ing with volunteers, discusses the teacher-morn's motivation and anexplanation of their effectiveness and changes in themselves, familymembers, and friends as a result of their participation.

The book seems to be directed to school administrators and in­dividuals involved in community mental health services for children.It can show them one practical and economical way of helping thesechildren within the community structure. The title may mislead class­room teachers into expecting specific teaching methods from thebook.

THE PSYCHOANALYTIC STUDY OF SOCIETY, VOLUME III. Edited by

Warner Muensterberger and Sidney Axelrad. New York:

International Universities Press, 1964, 408 pp., $7.50.

Reviewed by Aaron H. Esman, M.D.

This third number of an already distinguished annual of contribu­tions to applied psychoanalysis joins its predecessors on that shelf ofessential readings for the serious professional in any field, clinical ortheoretical, that bears on the understanding of man. The range of itssubject matter is vast-from European folk songs to character pa­thology among American Indians; from television to classic mythol­ogy. All--or at least most-of the papers reveal both profound under­standing of psychoanalytic theory and a serious, searching spirit ofscientific inquiry into these diverse aspects of homo socialis.

The child psychiatrist will be most interested in the long, almostencyclopedic paper by the late Anne Parsons, "Is The Oedipus Com­~lex Universal?" In the course of her consideration of this ques­tion-the subject of the old debate between Jones and Malinowski­she ~elineates with remarkably sensitive insight and empathy thespecial structure of the South Italian family to support her thesis thatevery society develops its own "nuclear complex" in its efforts to dealwith the universal incestuous impulses and fantasies of early child­hood. She concludes that the question of her title is an unanswerable

Dr. Esman is Director of Psychiatric Training, Jewish Board of Guardians, N.Y., Lee­turer in Psychiatry, Columbia University School of Social TVork, and President, Nr,»York Council on Child Psychiatry, 1964-1965.

Book Reviews 559

and, perhaps, meaningless one; the ingenuity of her argument andthe range of her scholarship command both respect and attention.Unfortunately, she occasionally slips, as in her plea for a "more care­ful definition of the superego," which, she says, is supposedly "a uni­versally found psychic apparatus laid down in early infancy." All willagree with her plea, but would wish for her a better grasp of the psy­choanalytic theory of the superego, the heir to the very Oedipus com­plex whose universality she calls into question.

Similarly, the distinguished theoretician of aesthetics, AntonEhrenzweig, offers a characteristically brilliant discussion of the pos­sibilities of ego-psychoanalytic elucidation of the creative process in"The Undifferentiated Matrix of Artistic Imagination." Arguing forthe importance of processes of dedifferentiation in the creative visionof the artist, he deals the coup de grace to Gestalt theories of percep­tion and reasons persuasively for the role of unconscious perceptualoperations in the peculiar sensitivites of the artist. But what are weto make of such locutions as "id fantasy" (in a paper on ego psychol­ogy) and "As the id learned to differentiate its aims with greater re­finement ..."? And, though Ehrenzweig succeeds in legitimizing (ifit still needs it) abstract art in its ability to promote empathic dedif­ferentiation in the viewer equivalent to that which he suggests occursin the artist, he fails to convince one of the unconscious nature ofsome of the perceptual operations he describes, many of which seemto fall under the rubric of what Hartmann has termed "preconsciousautomatisms." Nonetheless Ehrenzweig is, along with Gombrich, oneof the few students of aesthetics who has succeeded in making effectiveuse of the insights of psychoanalytic psychology, and in pursuing theelusive mystery of artistic creativity and the aesthetic experience.

The featured work in this volume is a fascinating symposium onmythology, which, if it does nothing else, demonstrates the range oflearning and sensibility of such eminent analysts as Arlow, Tarachow,Almansi, Kanzer, Stern, and Muensterberger. Kanzer's historicalexegesis of the evolution of the Oedipus myth is, for this reader, a truetour de force of Kunstioissencluiit, and worth the price of the bookitse If.

'Ve shall pass mercifully over Eissler's dated treatment of the prob­lem of conformity in American life (done far better by Reisman longago) and Grotjahn's justifiably outraged but appallingly dogmaticand unscientific diatribe against television, and end on the positivenote of unreserved praise for L. Bryce Boyer's labor of love, his paperon "Psychological Problems of a Group of Apaches." This work is amasterful marriage of psychoanalytic method with highly sophisti­cated social theory. It can serve as a model for work in this area.

Altogether, The Psychoanalytic Study of Society, Volume III, of­fers something for almost everyone, and much indeed for those who

560 Book Reviews

seek to expand the horizons of their thought beyond the clinic.Though much of the material is of only tangential relevance to thepractice of child psychiatry, the extension of interest of child psychia­trists into social and cultural groups until recently untapped will re­quire of them a familiarity with the social science principles adum­brated in the approach of this book, which successfully demonstratesthe maturation of psychoanalysis into a coequal partnership in thefamily of the sciences of human behavior.

THE EMOTIONALLY DISTURBED CHILD: THEN AND Now. By 1·Louise Despert. New York: Vantage Press, 1965, 329 pp.,

$6.00.

Reviewed by Chester R. Dietz, M.D.

The eminently respected author of this small volume seems to addressherself to several intriguing goals, and the successful accomplishmentof anyone of them could well have justified the book's publication.

The core of the book, Parts Three and Four, comprising 134 pages,is devoted to discussions of "The Emotionally Heal thy Child" and"The Emotionally Disturbed Child." The latter portion is organizedon the basis of the emotional disturbances of five age periods, with ad­ditional sections on "Anxiety, Normal and Abnormal" and on"Autism and Autistic Behavior." This section of the book is enrichedby Despert's unusually effective case descriptions and her obvious andwell-known familiarity with severely disturbed children, but adds lit­tle to presently available material.

An earlier section, Part Two, comprising 68 pages, promised to bethe most interesting part of the book. It attempts a historical survey ofthe place of the child in society, and of social attitudes toward emo­tional disturbance in children from early Biblical days to the present.However, the results of Despert's review of old manuscripts was clear­ly disappointing to her, and must be so to the reader. What emerges inthese pages is a repetitious picture of the indignities, cruelties. andapparently unheeding destructiveness visited upon infants and chil­dren throughout the past centuries; there was much emphasis on suchpractices as infanticide by exposure of defective or unwanted children.The author characterizes the nineteenth century as The American

Dr. Dietz is Director of the Wilmington (Delaware) Child Cuid.ancc Center and [orm crPresident, Regional Council of Child Psychiatry (Pennsylvania, Southern New Jersey andDelaware).