ABSTRACT
In this thoughtful and artistically insightful essay, Joseph Noshpitz elaborates the key elements that lead a preverbal infant to develop the capacity for intersubjectivity during the second half of the first year of life. By intersubjectivity, Noshpitz means infants’ ability to recognize and experience the feelings and intentions of others, beginning with the mother or primary caregiver, and to convey nonverbally their own feelings and intentions. This reciprocal attunement, which is a necessary precursor of infants’ capacity to develop empathy and compassion, requires the mother to respond with appropriate intensity, content, and timing to infants’ constantly shifting preverbal signaling of emotional states and desires. Only through the mother’s “resonant mirroring” can infants feel understood, intuit what the mother experiences and means, and learn to communicate their internal feelings and intentions.
