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The traditional psychoanalytic image of infancy was transformed in the 1980s by the application of observational research about infant–caregiver interactions to psychoanalytic developmental and clinical theorizing, as is well known. Recently, an array of articles and books has taken these original efforts forward in a further consolidation of new research, taking note of the apparent consilience of these advances with current findings from several adjacent fields. These include neuro-science, especially developmental neuroscience; affect theory and research; attachment theory; and clinical psychotherapy research and theory, especially that derived from psychoanalysis. Increasingly, these apparently diverse disciplines are linked — all organized within the broad conceptual envelope of non-linear dynamic systems theory. Overall, these convergences have been brought together to construct more complex and extensive models of the mind and its development; in turn, these have been applied to analytic theories of psychic structure, therapeutic action, and clinical technique.
From this developing model has emerged the core of ‘intersubjectivity theory’: that the fundamental processes motivating and organizing both early development and psychoanalytic process are rooted in two-person interactions that are co-created by the two participants, whether infant and parent or analysand and analyst. Transference and countertransference are viewed as fundamentally and inextricably intertwined within the dyadic system of the evolving analytic relationship, in an application of core concepts such as mutual interactive regulation and the ‘s elf-with-other’ internal representations. A strong analogy is made between early development and adult psychoanalysis.
Forms of Intersubjectivity in Infant Research and Adult Treatment is a valuable addition to this literature. It offers a clear and forthright statement of both the intersubjectivist position and other substantial implications of the in