Premium
Notes on infant psychotherapy
Author(s) -
Johnson Frank K.,
Dowling Jerome,
Wesner David
Publication year - 1980
Publication title -
infant mental health journal
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.693
H-Index - 75
eISSN - 1097-0355
pISSN - 0163-9641
DOI - 10.1002/1097-0355(198021)1:1<19::aid-imhj2280010105>3.0.co;2-s
Subject(s) - psychology , psychotherapist , analogy , infant mental health , child psychotherapy , mental health , developmental psychology , epistemology , philosophy
The idea of „infant psychotherapy” is easily misunderstood, especially by those who associate psychiatry with images of crazy behavior. Nevertheless, there is a type of activity conducted by adults with infants, discussed with increasing frequency in recent literature, which is best understood in an analogy with adult psychotherapy. This activity may be called infant psychotherapy or infant‐centered activity. Briefly, it consists of encouraging the infant to take the lead, and asking the adult in charge to follow or „track” the infant's behavior as unobtrusively as possible. This is more easily said than done, and the present work tries to show why this is so. A discussion of the maternal‐infant program at the Milwaukee County Mental Health Centre accompanies the observations.