THE ART OF GROWING

Into a world daily burdened with more ponderous and erudite books on child psychology, juvenile delinquency, and the problems of societal breakdown, Dr. Nixon's slim, wise book comes like a stiff offshore breeze on a torpid July day. Enlarging upon his that ""young people who undertake the psychological work characteristic of the years of youth can achieve a state of psychological maturity by their middle twenties"", Dr. Nixon slices through the historical web of fallacies concerning instinct, adolescent emotional development, the proper framework for youthful accomplishments, and the equation of anxiety with unhappiness. In a few short chapters, he puts into a whole new perspective the concept of utilization of the years 17-22 for more than simple education and pleasant leisure. He believes that by the time a youth has reached the full bloom of the cognitive stage of biological development, he will be ready to take his place as an adult if his life has been formally ordered by the sequence of discovery, experimentation, and mastery of his problems in each of the previous stages. Parents and teen agers who explore this book together will find it one of the neatest, most comprehensible volumes available on the often-painful, but never before so urgent, subject of growing up.