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Among infant-parent therapists, the new patient is not the parent or the baby, but the relationship between the infant and its parent or parents. This relationship is influenced by a rich and full past history on the parent's part and a quickly accumulating but still minimal history on the infant's part.
The relationship between the parent and the infant is conducted exclusively nonverbally and largely presymbolically, and has in recent times become a focus of much discussion as procedural memory. Drs. Cohen and Beebe describe a complex infant-parent treatment with a depressed mother and her child, which highlights these issues. The treatment combined many modalities that were successfully integrated by a flexible therapist in consultation with a baby expert.
Research on early social development has demonstrated a remarkable sensitivity in infants to the quality of their human environment from the first day of life. The evidence of neonatal imitation of facial movements and expression, the selective responsiveness to human over nonhuman stimuli, and the rapid development of preferences for the particular characteristics of persons involved in infant care together attest to preadaptation in the newborn to an environment of consistent interpersonal engagement. In infants of 2 months, microanalytic study of face-to-face engagements reveals a capacity to interact with others with complex and well-organized repertoires of gestures and facial expressions that appear responsive to the forms and timing of adult communication.