ABSTRACT
In the light of microanalysis data, innate intersubjectivity theory challenges traditional ideas of an asocial infant (Freud, Piaget) and describes the development of an innate awareness of self and other’s intentions and emotional evaluations in the dynamic sharing of minds acting in companionship. Rather than communicating for survival (Bowlby), infants actively participate in mutually regulated intersubjective engagements expressed as dynamic, multimodal, and temporally organized actions generated in and referring to a socio-cultural context. Infants are endowed with the ability to move, remember, and plan in sympathy with others through time, which creates expectations about the partner’s behaviour. Violation of these expectations, as in cases of maternal psychopathology, cause infants’ intense frustration and may seriously affect social, cognitive, emotional, and language development. Innate intersubjectivity theory leads to the hypothesis that disturbances in self-coordination and intersubjective attunement may constitute a shared feature among different neurodevelopmental disorders that affects communication and language development.
