This is an important text that synthesizes diverse literatures and theories on infant development into a coherent framework that illuminates the essence of infancy for all those who have infants, study infants, teach about infancy, make policy with respect to infant welfare, and work medically or therapeutically with mothers and their infants. It brings together in one volume the principal theories of infant development, beginning with Freud's vision of the Oedipal infant, moving through the post-Freudian conceptualizations of the infant of Anna Freud, Melanie Klein, and the British...