ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author believe that the parents’ phantasies were so powerful that they interfered with their capacity to see, observe, and think about the reality of their baby and themselves. Infant observation helps one to study one’s own feeling responses to the triad of baby, mother, and father. The therapist needs the experience of ongoing psychoanalytic work in order to be able to discern quickly the nature of the underlying anxiety and to have the conviction that it is helpful to name it and face it openly with the client. So a vicious circle of persecutory anxiety was set up between baby and parents, each interaction seeming to confirm the idea that they were monsters. The author found working with parents of infants to be deeply moving and rewarding. One becomes aware of how prone parents are to feeling inadequate, helpless, persecuted, enraged, depressed, and guilty.
