Maiello, Suzanne. (1995). ‘The sound object: a hypothesis about prenatal auditory experience and memory’.  Journal of Child Psychotherapy,  21, 1,  23-41.↗Maiello, Suzanne. (2008). ‘Agli albori della vita mentale: Forme nello spazio e nel tempo, e l'emergenza del terzo’. Paper presented at the Inter-School Forum on Child Analysis, Milan, 27.-29. 11. 2008, published at ISFCA (Internet site),  1-7.

Suzanne Maiello belongs together with Gianna Williams, who was one of her teachers, to the pioneers of Italian Child Psychotherapy. She trained both as an adult and as a child psychotherapist and is a founder member of the AIPPI (Italian Association of Child Psychotherapy) where she teaches and supervises. She is previously known to the

JAP's readership for an article on healing across cultures (‘Encounter with a traditional healer: Western and African therapeutic approaches in dialogue’: JAP, 2008, 53, 2).

Her specific contribution to child psychotherapy is in the areas of autism and infant observation. Her intensive work with autistic children might have led her to become particularly interested in the vicissitudes of the intrauterine life of the foetus and in the beginnings of mental life (Maiello (2001). ‘Prenatal trauma and autism’, Journal of Child Psychotherapy, 27, 2).

Maiello has gained enough material through teaching infant observation to research and reflect on the unfolding of rudimentary ego functioning in early infancy. This places her firmly within the Italian child psychotherapy tradition with and Alessandra Piontelli (1992).

Birth has, traditionally in psychoanalysis, been seen as a traumatic experience, as a caesura between life in the womb and life outside. Bion (1977) attributed some protocapacity to think to the foetus and by doing so he was postulating continuity between intra- and extra-uterine life. Maiello, inspired by Bion and informed by Mancia's and Piontelli's previous publications, looks at the uterine life of the infant backed up by recent neurobiological research. Maiello imagines an infant who, influenced by his nine months in the womb, takes with him through birth ‘proto-experiences’ and ‘proto-mental processes’ which represent the primary foundation of mental life outside the womb.

Suzanne Maiello published a paper in the Journal of Child Psychotherapy (1995), in which she thinks about the foetal experience of the mother's voice. A