The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant

This is a very important book to the professional who works with people of all ages. It focuses on what the child needs in the way of early attachment for the infant-toddler to feel secure and emotionally alive via the living relationship with the caretaker. If/when the attachment is not good enough to match the infants specific needs, then we can see the possible problems that can flow form this early deficit in attachment and follows into other forms of emotional issues. I would change the title of this book to include the importance of attachment as the necessary ingrediant facilitating the process of Individuation of the infant. This attachment is related to the bi-directional emotional cues between mother and infant (and father too) and the caretaker's responses.

This book provides a fascinating look of the psychological development of the self in the first year of life. It uses a lot of psychoanalytic terms that I was not familiar with, but you can get the main idea. It's a great read for anyone who works with young children, teens, or adults, and deals with attachment issues.

This includes the original study of Margaret S. Mahler for which she is most famous. Absolutely necessary for researching her Separation Individuation Theory.

If more new parents and/or future parents would read and understand the theories in this incredible book, there would be far less diagnoses of autism, bi-polar disorder and childhood depression in America. This book is invaluable if you want to raise a health, happy child.

This is a classic, well worth reading and re-reading. It is a reflection of powerful insights.