The child Book

I thought this was impressive overall. The book talks about the development of a child from the point that the baby is in the mother's tummy to the point that he / she starts veering towards the influence of the father from a matriarchal to a patriarchal way of living. One of the key takes for me from the book was the importance the mother has in the nascent years of a child's development and the extent to which love from the mother can hugely impact a child for the rest of its life. A father can come, proffers Neumann and water as much as he like but if the seeds of love havent been planted into the child from birth then nothing will grow. The author posits the idea that mothers who leave no stone unturned in providing everything for their child far from being the representations of ill-discipline for them which our contemporary puritan society would scream and shout about, Neumann claims that these mothers are able to instil such love and corroboration of the ego that the resultant confidence in the child is able to outweigh the negative effects of any discipline that he /she may lack. Neumann also raises some interesting points about the juxtaposition and clash that arises in the individual as he tries to develop himself as an individual within the confines of a society that places demands on how he should be as a reflection of the collective and the whole. The balance needed and the tension that the 2 potentially and often opposing demands place on the individual are the cause of much of the neurosis, Neumann claims, that we see in individuals and society today. Neumann also talks about the life and character of early man at the early stages of his mental and cognitive development - that man would have been far more multifaceted and multidimensional than the Metro reading, beer drinking, iPhone addicted, weekend living male we have today. That early man would could have been a poet, a hunter, a thinker, a father, a judge and an authority all in one. The book spoke a lot about the ego and the self and the super ego and the sun ego and the moon ego (wtf?) which I didn't have a Scooby doo about hence the 4 stars. Overall a very interesting read however if you have young children.