title: Review of Margaret Mahler: A biography of the psychoanalyst.
abstract: Reviews the book, Margaret Mahler: A biography of the psychoanalyst by Alma Halbert Bond (see record 2008-07778-000). This psychobiography tells an evocative tale of the late Margaret Mahler's embattled, difficult, yet highly productive life. Mahler was a developmental researcher and a psychoanalyst. Her delineation of the separation-individuation process dramatically shifted psychoanalytic developmental theory, altering psychoanalytic understanding of pathogenesis and treatment. Her understanding of the mother-child matrix, as well as her approach to studying it, directly affected psychoanalytic child therapy as well, focusing clinical attention on the moment-by-moment vicissitudes of early development and also upon the possibility of altering its course through therapeutic intervention in the mother-child relationship. The book suffers from a number of problems: the narrative is sloppy, marred by numerous jarring, obvious, even surprising flaws. There is tremendous repetitiveness-sentences and whole passages are repeated verbatim within several pages. There are multiple errors, inconsistencies, and contradictions, including in the chapter notes and bibliography. Along with this shoddiness, there is reliance upon antiquated, sometimes simply inaccurate, conceptualizations and definitions of psychoanalytic and psychological ideas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved).
authors: Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research.
authors: Sharone
authors: S
authors: Bergner