ABSTRACT
Many of my readers will be acquainted with the practical problems involved in the arrangement of adoptions, in a way that I myself can never hope to be. On the other hand, because of the nature of my work, covering as it does two decades of psychoanalytic as well as paediatric practice, I have an understanding on the theoretical side which is particularly my own. I am not going to attempt a wide survey on the subject of emotional development, which comprises such things as the finding of the self, the gradual maturation of each individual, and the changes in the way in which the external factor is important, leading up to socialization, and covering the vast area of human nature itself. Nor am I going to attempt to teach theory detail.
