ABSTRACT

In the Child and Family Department of the Tavistock Clinic, we have an Infant Mental Health group which staffs the Under-Fives' Counselling Service. This group of professionals is drawn from all four disciplines in the department: psychiatry, child psychotherapy, psychology, and social work. This chapter offers brief help to families whose concern is focused on a troubled baby or small child. In a family with a baby, important changes can occur because it is a natural time of growth. Problematical ways of relating have not yet been thoroughly internalized by small children, and pathological possibilities not yet actualized. Babies themselves develop and change at a speed never to be matched again in their lives. The chapter describes about families who come at a time of crisis bringing problems linked with moving forward to another stage of life, whether that stage involves the integration of a new baby or some more metaphorical integration of a new idea.