Recovering reverie: Using infant observation in interventions with traumatised mothers and their premature babies

Abstract

There is a danger in the subsequent days and weeks following premature birth that the traumatic impact on emerging maternal feelings will inhibit the mother's capacity for reverie (Bion 1962), steering her away from an experience of being with her baby. This deprives both mother and baby of opportunities to establish vital emotional links, thus further traumatising their developing relationship. In this paper, the premature baby's early experiences in neonatal intensive care and the efforts of mothers to interpret them and engage emotionally when they themselves are traumatised are explored. Using an applied method of observing the baby with the mother, the work of the child psychotherapist during the early critical period is discussed, showing how psychotherapeutic work provides a ‘psychological nest’, a mental space to facilitate emotional recovery and the de-inhibition of maternal reverie. Finally, with extended extracts from observations of a baby and her mother, where frozen reverie challenged an already compromised baby, I explore how observing in participation shed light on aspects of the emerging relationship and lent direction to the clinical intervention.