ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that it is a risky time because a metaphorical plait of processes comes to the fore. First, the most powerful genetically driven emotional systems are necessarily in the foreground for baby and mother, father, and the wider family. Second, unconscious processes have extraordinary power, and painful pre-existing vulnerabilities, hurts, and resentments can become freshly raw in the context of meeting a baby's needs and cries for help. Third, especially for the grown-ups most intimately involved in sacrificial parental care, primitive self-preservative defensive processes can be roused, and for some parents this can be very dangerous for their baby. The chapter describes a little about, baby Maisie's mother needed to use the defence of denial when exposed to Maisie's screams of pain: in mother Sarah's mind, Maisie was not in distress, she was intentionally trying to reduce her mother to tears.
