Using video to enhance the learning in a first attempt at ‘Watch, Wait and Wonder’

Abstract

This paper will show how discussing video clips with a mother as part of the ‘Watch, Wait and Wonder’ technique (N. J. Cohen, E. Muir, M. Lojkasek, R. Muir, C. J. Parker, M. Barwick, M. Brown (1999) WWW: Testing the effectiveness of a new approach to mother infant psychotherapy. Infant Mental Health Journal, 20, 429–451) proved central to bringing about change in the mother's representations of herself and her infant, and led to a significant reduction in her infant's aggressive behaviour, and incipient insecure ambivalent attachment to its mother. Reference will be made particularly to the improved reflective capacity (P. Fonagy, H. Steele, G. Moran, M. Steele and A. Higgitt, (1991) The capacity for understanding mental states: the reflective self in parent and child and its significance for security of attachment. Infant Mental Health Journal, 13, 200–217.) in the mother which resulted from the application of the Watch Wait and Wonder technique.

Keywords:

• Attachment theory
• psychodynamic parent–infant psychotherapy
• Watch
• Wait and Wonder
• representations
• video
• infant observation
• reflective function
• emotional regulation
• mutual responsiveness

Notes

¹This paper has been adapted from a presentation ‘Watch, Wait and Wonder: Helping Parents to Find Meaning in their Baby's Behaviour’ given at the West Midlands Institute of Psychotherapy Jungian Public Lectures Infant Observation Conference, 14 May 2005 ‘Out of the Mouths of Babies: Infant Observation and its Application’

²OXPIP is a voluntary organisation and charity which was set up in 1998 to provide a counselling service for mothers and babies with bonding or attachment difficulties. Object relations theory and attachment theory underpin the work.

³The Care-Index is an assessment system derived from attachment theory by Patricia Crittenden. This system for evaluating adult–infant patterns of attachment was developed for research purposes, but can be useful in applied settings to screen for risk, guide interventions, and assess some outcomes of treatment.

⁴Informed by the CARE-INDEX training and also Mary Ainsworth's approach to measuring maternal sensitivity.

⁵This article includes a word that is or is not asserted to be a proprietary term or trade mark. Its inclusion does not imply it has acquired for legal purposes a non-proprietary or general significance, nor is any other judgement implied concerning its legal status.

⁶Pinnacle Studio Software breaks the video down into 24 frames per second.

⁷This capacity to micro-analyse video data and to ‘grab’ still images can be particularly useful when the therapist's countertransference suggests covert hostility on the part of the parent towards a child, but this is difficult to see in ‘real time’. Frame-by-frame analysis can reveal several ‘threat faces’ per second.

⁸‘The process whereby the parent/therapist recognizes, labels and structures the baby's/patient's motor, mental and emotional experiences ahead of the baby's capacity to do this for himself. The baby/patient is able in time to do this for himself’ (Joyce and Baradon 2005).