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Frontiers of Infant Psychiatry is a collection of papers first presented at the First World Congress on Infant Psychiatry in Cascais, Portugal, in April 1980. Although the editors state in the preface that the "fledgling field of infant psychiatry seems to be developing too rapidly at the moment to accommodate a conventional textbook" (p XXV), several texts on infant psychiatry have been published.
The papers in this volume are authored by researchers, pediatricians, psychoanalysts, psychologists, teachers, and social workers, although physicians contribute the most frequently. The studies are of variable quality and appeal, so that readers are likely to be disappointed, as well as gratified, as they peruse the 477 pages of this book. Some studies seem to be tentative, while others are vague or overgeneralize on the basis of the material presented. In addition, some of the studies have been further developed and reported in the pediatric literature since