title: "In a black hole": the (negative) space between longing and dread: Home-based psychotherapy with a traumatized mother and her infant son.
abstract: This paper offers fragments from the first year of a home-based mother-baby psychotherapy, in which I attempted to help a traumatized and dissociated mother to emotionally engage with her infant son. The treatment was organized in part around certain developmental objectives common to both attachment and psychoanalytic theory. These include: The ability to name and metabolize feelings, to evoke a soothing maternal introject, and to relate to the partner's mind as a separate, understandable center of initiative and intention. In addition, attachment theory, with its emphasis on the critical psychobiological role of containing fear and distress in infancy, was a useful guide in formulating the treatment. The paper reviews research findings on mother-infant pairs described as frightened-disorganized, discusses some of the challenges encountered in home-based mother-infant psychotherapy and then discusses the case of Mary and John. The case illustrates how mother-infant psychotherapy may interrupt the intergenerational transmission of disorganized attachment by working within the couple to name, metabolize and flexibly respond to painful, dissociated or frightening experiences.
authors.affiliation: Infant-Parent Training Institute, Jewish Family and Children's Service of Waltham, Massachusetts, USA.
authors.forename: Judith
authors.initials: J
authors.lastname: Arons
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000437:Alcoholism / Q000523:psychology; D002649:Child Abuse / Q000523:psychology; D016241:Child of Impaired Parents / Q000523:psychology*; D003379:Countertransference; D004213:Dissociative Disorders / Q000523:psychology* / Q000628:therapy; D005260:Female; D006792:House Calls; D006801:Humans; D007223:Infant; D008297:Male; D009034:Mother-Child Relations; D009035:Mothers / Q000523:psychology*; D009769:Object Attachment; D011574:Psychoanalytic Theory; D011575:Psychoanalytic Therapy; D011618:Psychotic Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D011644:Puerperal Disorders / Q000523:psychology; D014167:Transference, Psychology