ABSTRACT
Learning from technical instruments and knowledge experience, and hand-in-hand with psychoanalysts, primary care givers, and paediatricians, the art and skill of early interactions evolved into the method of infant–parent psychotherapy, with variations necessary for complex family dynamics. Of primary importance to this approach has been the discovery of the infant's personality, capacities, and communications, as well as the parent's. In the United States, there have been variations on the treatment of mothers and infants. For example, Johnson, Dowling, and Wesner mounted a maternal infant programme at the Milwaukee Health Center where, for an hour a week, the distressed infant was encouraged to take the lead and the mother was asked to follow its behaviour as unobtrusively as possible. The chapter focuses on a particular model of mother– infant psychotherapy created by Stern-Buschweiler. He considered that a psychoanalytic intervention works on the mother's mental representations, as they are projected onto the infant.
