Infant Research and Adult Treatment: Co-constructing Interactions

by Beebe; Beatrice

• ISBN13: 9780881634471
• ISBN10: 0881634476
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Nonspecific Binding
• Copyright: 2005-05-10
• Publisher: Routledge

Summary

Infant Research and Adult Treatmentis 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 Treatmentis destined to be a permanent addition to every thoughtful clinician's bookshelf.

Author Biography

Beatrice Beebe Ph.D., a psychoanalyst and infant researcher, is Associate Clinical Professor of Psychology in Psychiatry, New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University, where she has been doing infant research for 30 years A founding faculty member of the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, Frank M. Lachmann, Ph.D. is Training and Supervising Analyst, Postgraduate Center for Mental Health and Clinical Assistant Professor at the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	ix
Preface	xi
Chapter 1 Burton, Then and Now	1	(20)
Chapter 2 A Dyadic Systems View	21	(24)
Chapter 3 Interactive Reorganization of Self-Regulation The Case of Karen	45	(20)
Chapter 4 Early Capacities and Presymbolic Representation	65	(20)
Chapter 5 Patterns of Early Interactive Regulation and the Presymbolic Origins of Self- and Object Representations	85	(36)
Chapter 6 Co-Constructing Inner and Relational Processes Self- and Interactive Regulation in Infant Research and Adult Treatment	121	(22)
Chapter 7 Representation and Internalization in Infancy Three Principles of Salience	143	(42)
Chapter 8 Three Principles of Salience in the Organization of the Patient—Analyst Interaction The Case of Clara	185	(24)
Chapter 9 An Interactive Model of the Mind for Adult Treatment	209	(24)
References	233	(28)
Index	261