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I am writing with some thoughts and questions following Campbell Paul and Frances Thomson-Salo's most interesting paper about ‘infantled
innovations in a mother-baby therapy group’. I was fortunate to see excerpts of their video material and hear them speak about their ideas at an ACP Scientific Meeting in London last summer. I think that without that experience (of seeing some evidence of the infants’ interest in and responsiveness to each other), it might have been more difficult to go along with the ideas expressed about the therapeutic value of infant to infant interaction. Even so, the paper still left me with many unanswered questions.
Many professionals offer post-natal support groups for women, and both the need for them and the value of them are widely recognized. It is often not possible to have a male co-worker, but the comments about the particular role Campbell Paul played certainly highlight how useful a ‘father figure’ can be. The major difference between Campbell Paul and Frances Thomson-Salo's group work as described, and others I have come across, lies in the emphasis that they place on the infants as equal group members. This, perhaps due to its unfamiliarity, is the most questionable part, with many of us I am sure, wondering about the implications of the statement ‘no child is too young for direct psychotherapeutic work’.
It was most interesting to read the authors’ descriptions of the way in which they interact with the infants, taking care to address them directly and ‘holding the infant's gaze while we think about her and respond to her is, we think, one of our most significant interventions’. They explain how they relate to the infants through attunement, and how they use ‘the language of action and play’, and they acknowledge that they not only followed but also initiated interaction with the child. They describe this as ‘minimal’ in action but powerful in effect and they give a very dramatic example of this. There are surely issues to be d