Modern Science and the Human Fertility Problem

sumption that libido is basically pleasure-seeking, and proposes instead Fairbairn's view that it seeks contact with objects: for example, the infant's mouth becomes erotized because it is the route toward, or the bodily structure for, contacting the libidinally desired object (the breast). Stanton, in discussing object choice, would add knowledge of social and group behavior theory to the traditional conceptions of object choice (which see it as an expression of identification, anaclitic relationship, or libidinal satisfaction); he points out that current theory is not very helpful in understanding the object relationships in the mature mutuality of love. Few of the thoughts reported here pass unchallenged in this symposium, and there are spirited disagreements if not diametrically opposed points of view reported, all of which makes not only interesting reading but lends conviction to the premise of the conference that there is still unresolved difference of interpretation and inadequacy of definition in many of the important constructs of psychoanalytic theory. For the reader with adequate background, it makes stimulating reading.