‘Talk to me baby, tell me what's the matter now'

‘Talk to me baby, tell me what’s the matter now.’ The entreating words of Billie Holiday summarize how the mother of eight-month-old Karen ¹ felt in the face of her incessant crying and demand for the breast. Like the two lovers in the blues, they seemed to be slaves to each other, desperately trying to understand what had gone wrong between them. Today, many mothers seek psychotherapy with their infants. All therapy methods relate the baby’s disturbance to a derailed interaction with the mother (Baradon, 2002; Baradon et al., 2005; Barrows, 2003; Berlin, 2002; Cramer and Palacio Espasa, 1993; Dolto, 1982, 1985, 1994; Fraiberg, 1987; Lieberman et al., 2000; Manzano et al., 1999; Stern, 1998; Watillon, 1993). One of them stands out in its focus on the baby. Here, the analyst contains the infant’s anxieties by describing to the infant her behavior and its unconscious roots. This method, psychoanalytic work with infants (Norman, 2001, 2004), in which the analyst interprets verbally to the baby, was the one I used when treating Karen and her mother.