In this ground-breaking work, leading Austrian sexologist Ernest Borneman describes each phase of the psychosexual development of children from conception to age eight. Based on extensive research, Childhood Phases of Maturity overturns the prevalent assumption that children are asexual innocents, for whom sexuality is an inconceivable aspect of life until the onset of puberty. In fact, Borneman argues, the opposite is true: sexuality is indisputably a fact of human development from conception; it manifests itself in children in various ways, including their games, rich fantasy life, need for skin contact, and masturbation. Research shows that the natural expression of sexuality in childhood is vital to the later healthy development of adult sexuality. Borneman divides his discussion of each successive age group into two sections: the first describes healthy sexual development at a particular age; the second examines the pathologies resulting from aberrations in sexual growth at that age. Borneman demonstrates that the roots of adult neuroses and paraphilias can often be traced back to disturbances in sexual development during childhood. Perhaps the most important influence on a child's psychosexual well-being is the parents' attitudes toward their own sexuality. Childhood Phases of Maturity is an authoritative, clearly written reference book, which will serve parents, educators, and health-care professionals as a valuable source of information on the sexual developmental psychology of children.

Published by Methuen Drama, the collected dramatic works of Bertolt Brecht are presented in the most comprehensive and authoritative editions of Brecht's plays in the English language.

Volume One of Brecht's Collected Plays contains Brecht's first performed stage works. Baal is inspired by Brecht's student life in Augsburg and follows the life of a young poet on the rocky road to inspiration; Drums in the Night was written in response to Brecht's experience as a medical orderly in the aftermath of the First World War; and In the Jungle of Cities, set in Chicago, covers the downfall of a family that has moved from the prairies to the jungle of the big city - award-winning in its day, it was described by a leading German daily as the play that 'has given our time a new tone, a new melody, a new vision'.

This volume also includes The Life of Edward II of England, a ballad-like adaptation of Marlowe's original, and five one-act plays The Beggar or the Dead Dog, Driving Out The Devil, Lux in Tenebris, The Catch and A Respectable Wedding in which the bourgeois proceedings take a hilarious turn for the unseemly.

The translators are Jean Benedetti, Eva Geiser and Ernest Borneman, Richard Grunberger, Michael Hamburger, Gerhard Nellhaus, Peter Tegel and John Willett. The translations are ideal for both study and performance. The volume is accompanied by a full introduction and notes by the series editor John Willett and includes Brecht's own notes and relevant texts as well as all the important textual variants.