The Earliest Relationship - Hardcover

T. Berry Brazelton, M.D., founder of the Child Development Unit at Children's Hospital Boston, is Clinical Professor of Pediatrics Emeritus at Harvard Medical School and Professor of Pediatrics and Human Development at Brown University. He is a famed advocate for children, and his many other internationally acclaimed books for parents include To Listen to a Child, Infants and Mothers , and, with Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D., The Irreducible Needs of Children . Bertrand G. Cramer, M.D., is professor of psychiatry at the University of Geneva, Switzerland.

Celebrated baby doctor Brazelton and psychiatrist/psychoanalyst Cramer describe how, during pregnancy and afterward, parents form attachments and interact with their children, usually positively but often negatively. The authors' combined knowledge about child development and the "ghosts" or "replayed battles" and "reincarnated relatives" from parents' earlier experiences is presented clearly along with informative lists such as the Neonatal Behavior Assessment Scale and in-text physiological research references. Interaction basics are covered, including synchrony, contingency, and entrainment. Most interesting are the nine case studies, which deal with clinical assessment and intervention in parent-child relationships when the parents' fears, fantasies, and ideals collide with the infant's temperament. Recommended. Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 10/1/89.
- Janice Arenofsky, formerly with Arizona State Lib., Phoenix
Copyright 1990 Reed Business Information, Inc.