ABSTRACT
This issue of Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy (JICAP) introduces the final papers of students who completed the Parent-Infant Program, most of them in spring 2012. These papers are final in the sense that each student explores and remarks on the work they did in the Parent-Infant Program; however, these papers also represent the beginning of the students’ work with mothers and babies. What follows are my words to the class of 2012 on the occasion of their graduation ceremony.
Let me start with a little personal story. When I was in college I had the privilege of studying with Arnold Schoenberg. On the first day of class everyone was desperately waiting for him to begin speaking. The first thing he said was, what is a cadence? Everybody was eagerly raising hands ready to give an answer. Schoenberg was not satisfied with any of the responses. He then said that a cadence meant when something ends something new can begin. This memory of my first class with Arnold Schoenberg comes to me now as I reflect on the students’ graduation from the program and this group of papers.
A graduation means something ends so something new can begin. The students’ graduation from the Parent-Infant Program is a bittersweet event; it commemorates the end of three years of intensive and serious work together. I feel that all the students are ready to walk out into the world, to work with mothers and their babies and young children in all kinds of situations. Something is ending—the students’ formal education in the Parent-Infant Program—and something new is beginning—many exciting experiences in which the students will use what they learned out in the world where their skills will be needed and welcomed by many mothers and their babies and young children. Questions about the mother-child relationship and early development never end no matter how much we have learned.
To return to my experience with Schoenberg, here was this world famous composer who had revolutionized music and here we were as his students waiting to see what he would talk about. And what he talked about was a cadence. Maybe there is some comparable wisdom that we can relate to when we speak about development and the mother-baby relationship. The baby comes out of the mother, but in order to grow it needs not only air and food but also the input of the mother and father as well as many others. Ultimately, the baby needs the input of the world that he or she is surrounded by. What we have done in the past three years is to try to understand what it is in the world that helps the baby to develop and eventually assume its own distinct personality.
Each composer develops his own music with the 12 tones he is given. Out of the 12 tones endless varieties of music can emerge from classical to folk music. The 12 tones by themselves do not tell us what the music is. The music only emerges after a composer arranges the 12 tones into a composition, which takes on meaning. In infant observation we try to make meaning of what we see. We write down observations as they occur, and the meaning emerges over time. When we observe a baby we arrange our notes so that we can find some meaning. The purpose of doing the observations is to study how out of the raw material of the observations, meaning does or does not emerge. We know that the mother and baby together have to create meaning between each other. Thinking about that allows us to better understand the development from being a baby in a strange world to being a child in a world that you have had a part in creating. This means that just as music has to be heard and listened to in order to exist, a baby cannot come alive and develop if it is not heard, listened to, and understood by a loving partner so that together they can create meaning.
The composer who creates the music leaves it to the audience to understand or not understand. The meaning of the music emerges as it is listened to or not listened to. Just like each composer creates his or her own music, each mother-baby pair creates their own way of understanding and communicating with one another. Each mother-baby pair creates their own music, which arises out of what the baby does and how the mother understands him or her and what the mother does and how the baby understands her.
I began this introduction with a story about studying with a famous composer and from there I shifted to describing the music made by mother and baby together as they interact with each other. We, the audience, the listeners, the students, the scholars, try to understand the meaning and give it back to the mother and baby so that they can go on to develop a language between one another.
Each relationship is unique, and each development from babyhood onward is unique as well. The hope is that the Parent-Infant Program provides enough groundwork for students’ to appreciate the endless variety with which mothers and their babies and young children experience the beginning of their life together. Thinking about it is a never-ending source of excitement in being allowed to observe such an important part of life for both mother and baby. The excitement does not end with the end of babyhood or even of childhood. Moments of it will come alive all through the life cycle.