The roominess of language: mothers' descriptions of their infants and a discourse analysis approach to reflective function

Abstract

This is a short description of a piece of research that compared and contrasted the way in which different caregivers described their infants and the relationship between the pair of them. The original study was based on a clinical sample of five mothers who all had been seen for infant-parent psychotherapy and one other, where there had been no problems, as a control; but for reasons of space only three examples are presented here. The transcripts of all the interviews were examined and coded to discover how often, and in what way, the internal and external worlds of infant and mother were acknowledged.

Keywords:

• Infant mental health
• maternal narrative
• reflective function

Keywords:

• Santé mentale du jeune enfant
• récit maternel
• fonction réflexive

Keywords:

• salute mentale del neonato
• narrativa materna
• funzione riflessiva

Acknowledgement

The author would like to thank Dr. Jacques China for the advice and encouragement given over the duration of the research project upon which this paper is based.