Introduction

This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book provides tools for the use of adult and child psychoanalysts and psychotherapists and counsellors. The aim of infant– parent psychotherapy is to understand and facilitate normal communication and the development of emotions and relationships. In exploring the internal world of the infant, the therapist focuses on the mental representation each parent has of themselves, and of their baby, each in relation to the other. Pregnancy and birth promote physical changes but even thinking of having a child can push both parents into parental reverie. This reverie opens up unconscious pathways within the parents to make them more available to the infant's primitive communications. Through this physical and emotional internal stimulation, old conflicts, enmeshed with fantasies and new constructions, create an imaginary child based on the experience of the foetus and their own projections of wishes about the child.