Book Reviews -- Theories of Child Abuse and Neglect: Differential Perspectives, Summaries, and Evaluations by Oliver C. S. Tzeng, Jay W. Jackson and Henry C. Karlson

Tzeng, Oliver C.S., Jay W. Jackson, and Henry C. Karlson, Theories of Child Abuse and Neglect: Differential Perspectives, Summaries, and Evaluations. Westport, CT: Greenwood Publishing Group, Inc., 1991, 355 pp., $59.95 hardcover.As the reported incidence of child abuse and nelect escalates, it becomes increasingly urgent that researchers and practitioners join to develop accurate and comprehensive models for the prevention and treatment of child maltreatment. "Theories of Child Abuse and Neglect" is a landmark attempt to examine current theories of abuse, to provide empirical and research evidence for each theory and, building on these findings, to propose development of a comprehensive, theoretical model which integrates the relevant features of each individual theory into one which can provide the basis for an integrated approach to understanding and treating child maltreatment.In the introduction the authors state that, in examining the existing theories of abuse and neglect, they found that many, if not most, of the current theoretical approaches are limited by either a narrow focus, a single disciplinary orientation, fragmentation in designing services, partial or biased knowledge, and fragmental evaluation. As a consequence, researchers, planners and practitioners come to this topic with widely divergent views and understanding. Misunderstandings and idiosyncratic views mitigate against both unified and well-supported service programs and public-wide understanding of the scope and complexity of child maltreatment."Theories of Child Abuse and Neglect" is a presentation of findings from a complex research project which had three major functions: a description of the many individual theories of child abuse and neglect, summaries of each theory across different theoretical views, and an evaluation of each based on supportive or contradictory research studies. Each of six types of child maltreatment is examined--physical abuse, incest taboo, incestuous abuse, sexual abuse, neglect, and psychological or emotional mistreatment. Each of the six is then organized under nine theoretical paradigms and explained in terms of the separate theories within each paradigm.Within each theoretical paradigm, the authors have provided an examination of each type of maltreatment based on research available in the field, reviewed the theoretical base of the approach, and analyzed and evaluated the theoretical soundness of the approach. In all, a total of 46 theories, models and perspectives, compiled from historical and contemporary literature, have been analyzed.This exhaustive analysis leads to tbe description of and justification for, a comprehensive theoretical model of child maltreatment, developed earlier by one of the authors, Tzeng (Tzeng, Hanner, & Fortier, 1988). The psychosemantics model, as it is titled, is a conceptual framework for organizing the issues and variables involved in social-behavior perspectives. It is this model which is applied to evaluate the identified theoretical paradigms. The authors state that the psychosemantic model affords the structure to decompose the concerned content issues into operationally defined components, to organize the issues and evidence of each theoretical perspective in terms of the basic conceptual framework of each model, and to summarize the evaluation results of all models in terms of their comprehensiveness and functional sophistication. …