ABSTRACT
The author motivates to share some of difficulties working with babies, who, the author feel, have given up reaching out for human contact. The babies, the author thinking of actively sever human connection by avoiding eye contact, stilling or startling when touched, and sleeping too much. Moreover, the babies look lethargic; their eyes are dull. Although these babies look depressed, the author do not think this captures the experience of futility and hopelessness they feel. The author looks at W. Ronald D. Fairbairn's understanding of how an infant might become hopeless and withdrawn. Fairbairn's theories grew out of, and in tandem with, the works of Sigmund Freud, Karl Abraham, Melanie Klein, Wilfred Bion, and Donald Winnicott. They have subsequently been developed within what is broadly known as object relations theory. In psychodynamic, systemically-sensitive parent-infant work the presence of the parent-infant transferences makes otherwise deeply warded off material more readily available for exploration.
