What is maternal-infant intervention? The role of infant psychotherapy.

Abstract

Therapeutic prevention and intervention programs for infants, their families, and their communities are now quite numerous across the country (Tjossem 1978). These programs differ in respect to size, target populations, and integration of services, but they all have one underlying premise; if intervention can be carried out while the child is still very young, the probability is considerably increased that the child can reach his or her potential. What these programs have in common is a new and concentrated interest in the psychosocial development of the infant in a context of reciprocal behavior with the primary caretaker. There are, of course, many differences, according to the specialized interests of the starting teams, the populations to be served, the therapeutic services already available, and the level of funding; yet all are bound together by the assumptions of infant psychiatry. In this paper, a context for a discussion of parent-infant intervention will be established. We will first address the assumptions of infant psychiatry and then will review the technique of infant psychotherapy. This technique, which we described in a previous paper (Johnson, Dowling, and Wesner 1980), has been found to be extremely useful in helping mothers and infants to increase mutual adjustment. Finally we describe a community-oriented parent-infant intervention program which used this technique.