Stanley I. Greenspan, M.D., is Clinical Professor of Psychiatry, Behavioral Sciences, and Pediatrics at the George Washington University Medical School, Chairman of the Interdisciplinary Council on Developmental and Learning Disorders, and a supervising Child Psychoanalyst at the Washington Psychoanalytic Institute. He was previously Chief of the Mental Health Study Center and Director of the Clinical Infant Development Program at the National Institute of Mental Health. A founder and former president of ZERO TO THREE: National Center for Infants, Toddlers, and Families, Dr. Greenspan has been honored with a number of national awards, including the American Psychiatric Association�s Ittleson Prize for outstanding contributions to Child Psychiatry Research and the American Orthopsychiatric Association�s Ittleson Prize for outstanding contributions to American mental health�the only individual to receive both Ittleson awards�and the Strecker Award for outstanding contributions to American psychiatry. He is the author or editor of more than 35 books and monographs and 100 articles and chapters. Nancy Thorndike Greenspan, a former health economist, writes about children�s development and is currently working on a biography of Max Born, the Nobel Peace Prize winning physicist and one of the pioneers in the development of quantum mechanics. She also works on environmental issues.
This beautifully lucid volume provides the best guide I know for assessing and understanding the developing child in all the dimensions of mental life and behavior. In the grand tradition of Anna Freud, Erikson, Mahler and Piaget, Greenspan's developmental structural approach provides a nuanced and in-depth practical method for assessing the child at every stage of development, emphasizing the unevenness of developmental levels. Greenspan's view is compatible with all the major contemporary theoretical points of view--cognitive, psychodynamic, behavioral, and relational--subsuming them in his objective descriptions. While the book is specifically aimed at the child clinician, those of us who treat adult patients will be hugely informed by this map of child development. The clinical vignettes are compelling. This is a superb how-to-do-it book, as well as one of the best introductions to the theory of mental development that I know. The biopsychosocial model of psychiatry, so often talked about but so little implemented, is here carried out splendidly. -- Arnold Cooper, M.D., Past President, American Psychoanalytic Association, Stephen P. Tobin and Dr. Arnold M. Cooper Professor Emeritus in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, Weill Cornell Medical College, New York, New York This book is an outstanding introduction to the theory of mental development. It contributes greatly to the literature by providing a model for assessment and treatment based upon a developmental biopsychosocial framework. -- Elliott Pae, M.D., Doody's Health Science Book Review , February 2004 Throughout the text, there are many examples of how [Dr. Greenspan] handles given situations, what words he speaks, and how he specifically approaches a given situation. It is at those moments that one best listens in on an expert at work. For the child and adolescent psychiatrist just starting out, these vignettes are true pearls to apply. -- Sonya Marie Vieira, M.D. and A. Reese Albright, M.D., Journal of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry , January 2005