Looking to relate: observations of a proactive and resilient infant who, with the support of father’s nurturing, helped draw mother out of her unresponsive and disconnected state of mind

ABSTRACT

The author describes eleven months of observations of baby Meena, whose mother was unresponsive to and disconnected from her during the first five months of observations after the birth. The observations illustrate the key role and contribution of the baby’s individual temperament in the development of the relationship with the Mother. It is further argued that, in this family, Meena’s father nurtured her and her own proactivity and, critically, her capacity, resilience and motivation assisted in carrying over positive aspects of her relationship with her Father to the relationship with her Mother. This seemed helpful in bringing Mother out of her more cut-off state of mind. Meena and her Mother were able to go on to achieve a reciprocally responsive relationship. These factors also helped Meena not to withdraw or to give up on trying to connect with her mother, as do the infants of unresponsive mothers in the still-face studies [Weinberg, M. K., & Tronick, E. Z. (1996). Infant affective reactions to the resumption of maternal interaction after the still-face. Child Development, 67(3), 905–914. https://doi.org/10.2307/1131869]. The presence of the observer and the extended family’s attribution of intelligence and communicative intent to Meena, even in utero, are seen as part of her ‘facilitating environment’ [Winnicott, D. W. (2018). The maturational processes and the facilitating environment: Studies in the theory of emotional development. Routledge. first published in 1965 by the Hogarth Press and the Institute of Psycho-Analysis.].

KEYWORDS:

• Reciprocally responsive relationship
• proactivity
• resilience
• positive projective identification
• still-face studies
• interactional synchrony

Acknowledgements

I am most grateful to Meena’s parents and her extended family for allowing me into their lives. All identifying details have been changed to protect their confidentiality. I am also grateful to the reviewers of this paper and to Trudy Klauber, whose comments helped me to enhance it.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on the contributor

Robert Monzo is a member of the British Psychoanalytic Council and a Psychoanalytic Couple Psychotherapist trained at Tavistock Relationships in London. He worked in the National Health Service in Barnet Child and Adolescent Mental Health Service and the Psychotherapy Department of Homerton Hospital. The observation described here was part of his training in Couple Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy at TR, where he is now a visiting clinician working psychoanalytically with couples. He leads a multi-disciplinary study group on the theory and practice of couple psychotherapy in Vacallo, Switzerland.