ABSTRACT
This chapter suggests that serial brief treatment is the desirable way to treat most parent-infant problems, a necessary adaptation to the nature of early development. The basic therapeutic posture that was needed to work with the ready positive transference in hysterical neurotics was neutrality and relative emotional deprivation. The basic therapeutic posture required to work with the potentially devastating negative transference of a new mother is support and positive regard. A positive therapeutic alliance, transference, and regard play different roles in the clinical situation of parent-infant therapy. The research design thus became a comparison of therapeutic outcomes between two different therapeutic approaches. The two approaches—psychoanalyticaliy inspired brief mother-baby psychotherapy and interactional guidance—differed in the following important respects. The theoretical therapeutic goal for the Geneva group is to change the mother's representations, while for the Ann Arbor group it is to change the mother's overt behavior.
