How video can bring to view pathological defensive processes and facilitate the creation of triangular space in perinatal parent-infant psychotherapy
Title:
How video can bring to view pathological defensive processes and facilitate the creation of triangular space in perinatal parent-infant psychotherapy
Author:
Jones, Amanda
Appeared in:
Infant observation
Paging:
Volume 9 (2006) nr. 2 pages 109-123
Year:
2006-08-01
Contents:
This paper explores what it can mean to use video in psychoanalytically informed parent-infant psychotherapy (B. Beebe, 2003, Brief mother-infant treatment: Psychoanalytically informed video feedback. Infant Mental Health Journal, 24(1) 24-52). I use case material to show how the use of video helped illuminate previously unseen transference dynamics between a mother and her baby; and also the defensive processes roused in the mother since her baby's birth. I discuss the purpose of filming and describe how to work with the material that emerges whilst watching the film. I suggest a parent's super-ego is likely to be roused in the context of filming and watching (S. Freud,1923, The Ego and the Id. S.E. 19: 3-66. J. Sandler and A. M. Sandler, 1998, Internal Objects Revisited, London: Karnac). If used sensitively working with video can introduce a helpful observer position (R. Britton, 1989, The missing link: parental sexuality in the Oedipus complex. In: R. Britton, M. Feldman and E. O'Shaughnessy (eds) The Oedipus Complex Today: Clinicall Implications, London: Karnac. D. Birksted-Breen, 1996, Phallus, Penis and Mental Space, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 77, 649-657), a different triangular perspective from which new thoughts can emerge that, in time, might help to modify a parent's defensive responses and soften his or her punishing super-ego (J. Strachey, 1934, On the therapeutic effect of psycho-analysis, International Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 15, 127-129). For the baby, this can bring relief: for as the projected aspects of the parent are reclaimed, the baby becomes freer to be noticed as a separate being with thoughts and feelings of its own. In this way the use of video can enhance a parent's reflective functioning and mentalizing capacities (P. Fonagy, M. Steele, H. Steele, T. Leigh, R. Kennedy & G. Mattoon, 1995 Attachment, the reflective self, and borderline states: The predictive specificity of the Adult Attachment Interview and pathological emotional development, In S. Goldberg, R. Muir and J. Kerr (eds), Attachment theory: Social, developmental and clinical perspectives, pp. 233-279 (Hillsdale, NJ: Analytic Press). A. Slade, 2002, Keeping the Baby in Mind: A Critical Factor in Perinatal Mental Health, Zero to three Press, June/ July, l0-16).
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