Levels of change in parent–infant psychotherapy

Abstract

This paper offers a way of thinking about the process of parent–infant psychotherapy. I start by outlining some ideas as to what can go awry in troubled parent–infant relationships, and then a way of working with parents with pre-verbal babies. I suggest a model for understanding three interlaced levels at which change might occur if a psychodynamic, systemically sensitive, therapeutic intervention is offered. I describe a particularly challenging clinical case in which a mother and I also worked with video material of her and her son.

Keywords:

• Parent–infant psychotherapy
• projective identification
• rape
• trauma in utero
• unconscious processes
• working with video

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Juliet Hopkins, Angela Joyce and Trudie Rossouw for their clinical wisdom in the treatment of this case, and Fatima for letting me present her and Daniel at the UCL conference in May 2005. This is an expanded written version of that presentation.