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Stanley Greenspan and his associates in the Clinical Infant Development Program, between 1977 and 1983 conducted a study of infants in 47 multirisk, severely disturbed families, a monumental task. Comprehensive infant and family studies began in each instance while the infant was still in utero. The “approach views the infant in a context that includes not only his or her own multiple lines of development, but also mother, father, other family members and relevant social structures.” In this volume, four of the infant and family studies of the 47 are described for an audience of health and mental health workers and educators. The carefully chosen interdisciplinary team, including paraprofessionals, learn to work in varied creative ways with “participants,” wherever they find them and there engage them in preventive intervention.
The authors lift up a complex model designed to serve the neediest in our society with what we believe is the best we have to offer. They demonstrate their ability to respond to this group of multirisk families, simultaneously over a 6-year period, with their basic requirements of food, clothing, and shelter, and other services to meet infant, child, and adult needs at each person's developmental level. Psychotherapeutic intervention, accomplished in a timely fashion, addressed the dynamics of the participants' development from an individual, familial, and generational point of view. They note that, “Because this was a clinical research effort that attempted to change underlying capacities through psychodynamic approaches, it was essential to develop measures of just these capacities, as well as the critical aspects of the treatment process.” “Developmental diagnosis … was especially important to consider since so many of the CIDP mothers