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Evan, a 35-year-old single man working in the creative arts, is distraught at not being in a relationship. Based on our year of work together and what I know of him and his history, I say something suggesting that in order for this to happen, he might need to see himself as more separate from his family of origin. Evan leans back on the couch, grimaces, baring his teeth. His hand which had been resting on his thigh, opens, his fingers splayed. He arches back and away from me. Clearly, my comments—accurate or not—elicited a strong reaction. This was clearly not a good feed.
Understanding each nonverbal cue from Evan's response, translating it into the language of caregiver–infant interaction as well as my sensing the need to repair and recalibrate my comments (as well as tone and even physical posture) would not have been possible were it not for the work of Beatrice Beebe and Frank Lachmann. They, like their fellow travelers such as Daniel Stern, Louis Sander, and Edward Tronick, to name but a few, have been studying caregiver–infant interaction for close to an astonishing 40 years. Their latest book represents the culmination of their work and the accumulated wisdom of four decades of research and clinical practice. Here Beebe and Lachmann weave together their work on contingency expectation, micro-analysis of caregiver–infant face-to-face
interaction, with findings from the attachment world. The result is a window on the early origins of attachment as well as various psychopathologies. The book is chock full of research findings and their implications.
A book review can't possibly do it justice; just a few of their many insights include the dialogic origin of mind, the infant's early ability to detect contingency, and how patterns of self and interactive regulation are actively created in partnership. In understanding variations of working models of attachment at just four months (a much earlier critical developmental period than once thought, and therefore provi