Sorry, this will be long but that quote really affected my experience and I need to respond with our story for spottyshoes and anyone else who's worried.
I read the Liedloff book when first pregnant and that quote stuck in my mind, so I would never leave ds to cry at all the first few months - had co-sleeper cot till he grew out of it then used to dash upstairs to him at 1st noise. Fine when he was tiny, and exactly what I will do with the next one too, but by 6 months he was still waking several times a night and needed a feed to get back to sleep. I was getting exhausted, not a good mum during the day, and he was becoming increasingly cranky and miserable.
Eventually I started doing a lot of reading - Elizabeth Pantley was good, tried her methods for weeks but no progress. Finally, reading the discussions DaddyJ refers to I came across systematic reviews of different sleep training methods, to find the most effective seemed to be 'extinction' (CIO), which didn't seem to be associated with any heightened anxiety; but since parents couldn't bring themselves to try it, the next most effective was CC, with regular checks. So after much soul-searching decided to try CC.
But ... CC didn't work, because ds would just get crosser when we went in to check him. So with a heavy heart, one day, we tried CIO. In desperation, and only because I'd read the research on extinction. First time: 45 minutes crying, then asleep. I was crying too. Next time: 10 mins. Next time: 5 mins. Next time: straight down. Started sleeping almost through straight away - the breakthrough was that he had learned to settle himself at his brief night wakings.
But I still had the Liedloff quote in my head and was worried, so was still reading, and finally found something on Dr Sears which said, look, if you are really desperate and feel you HAVE to try CC or similar, then carefully observe your child's behaviour during the day. If you see them getting depressed or anxious at all, that's your sign to stop. And that was my 'lightbulb moment'. He was SO much happier during the day from day one of doing this, he was like a different baby. It was absolutely clear that this was what he had needed, he is a child who needs lots of sleep and that reliance on me to settle him back was really disturbing that sleep and making him very grouchy.
He still cries himself off (now 14 mo.) for a few minutes sometimes if he's tired, but now I see it as him just being grumpy and tired. If he wakes and cries in the night now and doesn't settle after a minute I know there's something actually wrong, and I will of course go in - whether it's teething or I think he's had a couple of nightmares and just needed a cuddle. But now I know when there's something wrong. And he is a blissfully happy child, really chilled out, affectionate and clearly doesn't feel abandoned in any way.
I am absolutely not advocating CIO for everyone. I would have loved the no-cry solutions to work for ds, or even CC, but they didn't. Different things work for different children, and we only know which will work for ours by trying it out. We will make mistakes - the main thing is that we want the best for our kids and love them. Also not everyone has sleep problems, so some people are lucky enough never to have to think about this stuff!! But I do feel we shouldn't be frightened off trying methods which have been proven to work for some babies with sleep difficulties by emotive things like this with no evidence behind them.
No offense to OP but I know spottyshoes and others may feel really upset by that quote, just like I was, so I wanted to make sure the other side of the story was heard.