Beginning to Grow: Five Studies by Sylvia Brody

Beginning to Grow: Five Studies describes work with five children from infancy to maturity at age 18. The children’s growth is traced with regard in terms  of conflict and ego strength. Children’s drawings are used to illustrate their lines of development by focusing on the drives towards voyeurism and exhibitionism.

Freud reminded us that theory was good but did not prevent reality from happening.  Sylvia Brody once more advances analytic understanding by maintaining relentless discipline in studying lives as they actually unfold.  This new rich and readable account of several lives studied across decades exposes and explores essential aspects of mental functioning now too often neglected.

–Warren S. Poland, M.D.

With clarity, and drawing on observational evidence, Brody brings mother‑infant interaction and its impact on subsequent development to the center stage of psychoanalytic theory.

–Peter Blos, Jr., M.D.

This is a book not to be missed by anyone who works with children. It provides an incisive history of infancy research and a longitudinal study of development from birth to age 18.

–Arlene Kramer Richards, Ed.D.