ABSTRACT
This chapter reviews the importance of seeing patterns relevant to the tasks of the infant-parent psychotherapist. It examines the fundamental place of observation and description of the nonverbal in the work of the infant-parent psychotherapist. The task of identifying which nonverbal patterns are pertinent for the infant-parent psychotherapist, or even defining what establishes a meaningfully distinguished nonverbal pattern at all, has often followed from intuition or a sense of face-validity. Nonverbal behaviors are generally not subjected to a specific classification system, even when they serve as primary data for impressions influencing psychological theory building or clinical intervention. Infant-parent psychotherapies vary in method based on circumstance, orientation, and goals. Infant-parent therapists attending to the nonverbal must not only have access to the psychological self-knowledge that allows for inner access to countertransference feelings, but also access to their own movement repertoire, so that notational interferences are readily recognized.
