ABSTRACT
This chapter outlines The Royal Children’s Hospital, Melbourne approach to therapeutic interventions with parents and their baby. It describes some capacities that an infant brings to therapy, and also outlines the underlying theoretical framework. The framework includes the therapist’s experience of an infant’s subjectivity and capacity for self-regulation. The chapter focuses on short-term infant–parent psychotherapy. Many infants can modify interaction and behaviour in a single session with an infant mental health therapist. The therapist would usually formulate some links and interpretations, commenting on some aspects more quickly than they might in other settings. Their containment also conveys many silent interpretations. In the countertransference, powerful, often painful feelings become known by projective identification; containment of these often contributes to development of a parent’s reflectiveness. Responding to the baby as a person shifts the view of the baby as an object towards seeing the baby as intentional and seeking to be in a relationship.
