From Library Journal "What is the meaning of the infant having to build a distorted symbolic world that in the end has to be discarded and repressed?" The present work seeks to provide a "Freudian-Piagetian synthesis" that shows how this symbol-bound world of free libidinal impulses and object relations is not discarded, but becomes a precondition, a symbolic investment, for interpersonal drives and knowledge acquisition. To Furth (Psychology, Catholic Univ. of America), "the objects of knowledge are objects of intense desire," as shown in the theories of Piaget and in the metapsychology of Freud. This clearly written synthesis will be cited in future references to theories of a knowledge-id connection, and the biological drive theory of human sociability and morality. For academic collections. William Abrams, Portland State Univ. Lib., Ore.Copyright 1987 Reed Business Information, Inc.