ONE LITTLE BOY

New Ways in Discipline has made Dr. Baruch virtually a household word in many families, considerably widening her market. This new book, revealing as it does the childhood frustrations, hostilities and insecurities existing in lesser or greater degrees in most children, is directed first, perhaps, to professionals in the field of psychotherapy, but second to those parents who are ready to take it. Without some basic understanding of the intimate interrelation of physical and emotional factors, past and present, external and internal, One Little Boy might prove a profoundly shocking experience. It is a case history of a child whose asthma, school failures, maladjustments persuaded his parents to bring him into therapy, of the 2(apple) years of regular sessions and the gradual decrease in special conferences; of the group therapy which seemed for a time to precipitate the parents into greater tensions and confusions and finally brought them out to a measure of adjustment. It is an intimate, frank handling of subjects too often taboo, too little understood. It is a story of fantasies revealed, of hostilities released, of fears and guilt exposed and understood, of repressions unblocked -- and of the process of growing up made possible through wise handling. Dr. Baruch has used a case which, confessedly, was in excess of the normal, while at the same time recognizably parallel to conditions existing everywhere in varying degrees. For this reason, the book should be recommended to doctors, to psychotherapists, and those using their techniques, and to a wide, though selective audience that would find its skilful projection of a professional point of view to a lay public of constructive value in better understanding of the place modern therapy can take in helping those in need. A dangerous subject in any other than highly trained hands, this book helps chart the way, provide a measuring stick.