Beatrice Beebe

This third edition of the book was released after Jeremy Nahum's death and it is dedicated to the memory of three pioneers of the dialogue between psychoanalysis and infant research: Daniel Stern, Berry Brazelton and Jeremy Nahum. The book opens with Daniel S. Schechter's Memories of Dan Stern and Karlen Lyons-Ruth's Tribute to Jeremy Nahum. After the introduction written by the editor, Giuseppe Leo, the development of infant research methodologies is illustrated by the contribution written by Beatrice Beebe, whose 'journey' leads us through the 'creating' of a discipline with its creators, her traveling companions, such as Daniel Stern, Frank Lachmann, Joseph Jaffe and many others. Trevarthen's chapter is a discussion of his work with T. Berry Brazelton. Tronick's contribution focuses on mother-infant dyad as well as on analyst-patient one, conceived as open dynamic systems, capable of meaning making, in which coherence is at best imperfect, and coordination alternates with mismatching. Karlen Lyons-Ruth and Jeremy Nahum, two of the members of the Boston Change Process Study Group, focus on the representational world of the mother, particularly on the assessment of mother's representation of role-confusion in her relation with her child.

Beatrice Beebe’s groundbreaking research on mother-infant communication has influenced practitioners for decades. Here she presents frame-by-frame analysis of illustrations of mother-infant interaction, identifying patterns of attachment exhibited in the micro-moments of real time.

Infant Research and Adult Treatment is the first synoptic rendering of Beatrice Beebe’s and Frank Lachmann’s impressive body of work. Therapists unfamiliar with current research findings will find here a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of infant competencies. These competencies give rise to presymbolic representations that are best understood from the standpoint of a systems view of interaction. It is through this conceptual window that the underpinnings of the psychoanalytic situation, especially the ways in which both patient and therapist find and use strategies for preserving and transforming self-organization in a dialogic context, emerge with new clarity. They not only show how their understanding of treatment has evolved, but illustrate this process through detailed descriptions of clinical work with long-term patients. Throughout, they demonstrate how participation in the dyadic interaction reorganizes intrapsychic and relational processes in analyst and patient alike, and in ways both consonant with, and different from, what is observed in adult-infant interactions. Of special note is their creative formulation of the principles of ongoing regulation; disruption and repair; and heightened affective moments. These principles, which describe crucial facets of the basic patterning of self-organization and its transformation in early life, provide clinical leverage for initiating and sustaining a therapeutic process with difficult to reach patients. This book provides a bridge from the phenomenology of self psychological, relational, and intersubjective approaches to a systems theoretical understanding that is consistent with recent developments in psychoanalytic therapy and amenable to further clinical investigation. Both as reference work and teaching tool, as research-grounded theorizing and clinically relevant synthesis, Infant Research and Adult Treatment is destined to be a permanent addition to every thoughtful clinician's bookshelf.

The Origins of Attachment: Infant Research and Adult Treatment addresses the origins of attachment in mother-infant face-to-face communication. New patterns of relational disturbance in infancy are described. These aspects of communication are out of conscious awareness. They provide clinicians with new ways of thinking about infancy, and about nonverbal communication in adult treatment.Utilizing an extraordinarily detailed microanalysis of videotaped mother-infant interactions at 4 months, Beatrice Beebe, Frank Lachmann, and their research collaborators provide a more fine-grained and precise description of the process of attachment transmission. Second-by-second microanalysis operates like a social microscope and reveals more than can be grasped with the naked eye.The book explores how, alongside linguistic content, the bodily aspect of communication is an essential component of the capacity to communicate and understand emotion. The moment-to-moment self- and interactive processes of relatedness documented in infant research form the bedrock of adult face-to-face communication and provide the background fabric for the verbal narrative in the foreground. The Origins of Attachment is illustrated throughout with several case vignettes of adult treatment. Discussions by Carolyn Clement, Malcolm Slavin and E. Joyce Klein, Estelle Shane, Alexandra Harrison and Stephen Seligman show how the research can be used by practicing clinicians. This book details aspects of bodily communication between mothers and infants that will provide useful analogies for therapists of adults. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and graduate students.Collaborators Joseph Jaffe, Sara Markese, Karen A. Buck, Henian Chen, Patricia Cohen, Lorraine Bahrick, Howard Andrews, Stanley FeldsteinDiscussants Carolyn Clement, Malcolm Slavin, E. Joyce Klein, Estelle Shane, Alexandra Harrison, Stephen Seligman

The Origins of Attachment: Infant Research and Adult Treatment addresses the origins of attachment in mother-infant face-to-face communication. New patterns of relational disturbance in infancy are described. These aspects of communication are out of conscious awareness. They provide clinicians with new ways of thinking about infancy, and about nonverbal communication in adult treatment.Utilizing an extraordinarily detailed microanalysis of videotaped mother-infant interactions at 4 months, Beatrice Beebe, Frank Lachmann, and their research collaborators provide a more fine-grained and precise description of the process of attachment transmission. Second-by-second microanalysis operates like a social microscope and reveals more than can be grasped with the naked eye.The book explores how, alongside linguistic content, the bodily aspect of communication is an essential component of the capacity to communicate and understand emotion. The moment-to-moment self- and interactive processes of relatedness documented in infant research form the bedrock of adult face-to-face communication and provide the background fabric for the verbal narrative in the foreground. The Origins of Attachment is illustrated throughout with several case vignettes of adult treatment. Discussions by Carolyn Clement, Malcolm Slavin and E. Joyce Klein, Estelle Shane, Alexandra Harrison and Stephen Seligman show how the research can be used by practicing clinicians. This book details aspects of bodily communication between mothers and infants that will provide useful analogies for therapists of adults. It will be essential reading for psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and graduate students.Collaborators Joseph Jaffe, Sara Markese, Karen A. Buck, Henian Chen, Patricia Cohen, Lorraine Bahrick, Howard Andrews, Stanley FeldsteinDiscussants Carolyn Clement, Malcolm Slavin, E. Joyce Klein, Estelle Shane, Alexandra Harrison, Stephen Seligman

With new discussions by Theodore Jacobs and Regina Pally Adult psychoanalysis has approached the study of intersubjectivity by concentrating primarily on the verbal dialogue, an explicit mode of communication. Infant research, on the other hand, focuses on nonverbal communication and implicit modes of action sequences, operating largely out of awareness, such as interactions of gaze, facial expression, and body rhythms. This book proposes that an integration of these two approaches is essential to a deeper understanding of the therapeutic action. The authors use a dyadic systems model of self- and interactive regulation as a lens for comparing diverse theories of intersubjectivity, both in adults and infants. Building on the definition of intersubjectivity in infancy as correspondence and matching of expressions, the authors offer an expanded view of the presymbolic origins of intersubjectivity. They address the place of interactive regulation, problems with the concept of matching, the roles of self-regulation and of difference, and the balance of self- and interactive regulation. An adult treatment of early trauma is described through detailed clinical case material illustrating both the verbal narrative and the implicit "action dialogue" operating largely outside of awareness. This book includes new discussions by Theodore Jacobs, arguing that nonverbal communication is vitally important to psychoanalysis, and by Regina Pally, arguing that aspects of this book have parallels in neuroscience.

Infant Research and Adult Treatment is the first synoptic rendering of Beatrice Beebe’s and Frank Lachmann’s impressive body of work. Therapists unfamiliar with current research findings will find here a comprehensive and up-to-date overview of infant competencies. These competencies give rise to presymbolic representations that are best understood from the standpoint of a systems view of interaction. It is through this conceptual window that the underpinnings of the psychoanalytic situation, especially the ways in which both patient and therapist find and use strategies for preserving and transforming self-organization in a dialogic context, emerge with new clarity. They not only show how their understanding of treatment has evolved, but illustrate this process through detailed descriptions of clinical work with long-term patients. Throughout, they demonstrate how participation in the dyadic interaction reorganizes intrapsychic and relational processes in analyst and patient alike, and in ways both consonant with, and different from, what is observed in adult-infant interactions. Of special note is their creative formulation of the principles of ongoing regulation; disruption and repair; and heightened affective moments. These principles, which describe crucial facets of the basic patterning of self-organization and its transformation in early life, provide clinical leverage for initiating and sustaining a therapeutic process with difficult to reach patients. This book provides a bridge from the phenomenology of self psychological, relational, and intersubjective approaches to a systems theoretical understanding that is consistent with recent developments in psychoanalytic therapy and amenable to further clinical investigation. Both as reference work and teaching tool, as research-grounded theorizing and clinically relevant synthesis, Infant Research and Adult Treatment is destined to be a permanent addition to every thoughtful clinician's bookshelf.

Coordination between infant and adult is thought to be essential to infant development. However, the study is theoretically and methodologically grounded in a dyadic systems perspective and relational psychoanalysis. Our automated apparatus explores the micro-second timing of 4-month infant-adult vocal coordination to predict 12-month infant attachment and cognition. This work also further defines a fundamental dyadic timing matrix that guides the trajectory of infant development.