ABSTRACT

This chapter discusses therapies that use the parents representations as both the port of entry and the theoretical target. It also discusses therapies which, while aiming to alter the parents' representations, choose other ports of entry into the system, such as via the infant's overt behavior; via the parent-infant interaction; via the therapist's representations; and finally via the infant's representations. The chapter begins with infant-parent psychotherapy, because Alicia Lieberman and Jeree Pawl are figuratively the direct descendants of Selma Fraiberg and are continuing the program begun by Fraiberg in San Francisco. It describes an approach that uses the parent-infant interaction as the privileged and even exclusive clinical focus. The different therapeutic approaches selected for description represent a wide spectrum of parent-infant psychotherapies. This selection is not intended to be exhaustive but rather to illustrate the main ports of entry and therapeutic targets of the clinical system.