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Three research projects won the Biannual Psychoanalytic Research Exceptional Contribution Awards: ‘Verbal and non-verbal indicators in psychotherapies with mothers and babies’, Marina Altmann de Litvan and Sylvia Gril; ‘A contingency-based approach to the etiology of “disorganised” attachment: the “flickering switch” hypothesis’, Gyorgy Gergely and Orsolya Koos; and ‘When more is less: an exploration of psychoanalytically-orientated hospital-based treatment for severe personality disorder’, Marco Chiesa.
The work of Litvan and Gril is a correlation study in which they sought to demonstrate that increases in non-verbal behaviours between a parent and a baby would correlate with increased thoughtfulness between a parent and a therapist. They did not find a ‘direct and lineal’ relationship between the two, but do suggest the importance of stimulating ‘the mother to develop non-verbal communications with the baby’. With its 10 subjects, 50 variables and no control group, the study, as discussant Phyllis Tyson noted, is very much a pilot project. Tyson further commented that the study is part of a much larger study in Uruguay investigating change in psychotherapy, with the intention ‘of finding therapeutic strategies to more effectively deliver psychotherapeutic services to at risk populations’.
Gergely and Koos, in their paper, give a clear description of the experiment at the heart of their study. A sample of 100 3- and 5-month-old babies were seated in front of two monitors, in such a way that they could freely move their legs. One monitor presented a live image of the babies’ moving legs, thus providing a visual stimulus perfectly contingent with the infants’ responses. The other monitor presented a previously recorded and therefore non-contingent image of the infant's moving legs. They found that by 5 months untraumatised babies prefer, or can manage, imperfect contingency, whereas traumatised babies continue to look at perfectly correlated images of themselves. The a