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A member of the Association of Child Psychotherapists and the Association for Child Psychoanalysis, Tessa Baradon edited this book on parent-infant psychotherapy using her rich experience as the initiator and developer of the Parent-Infant Project at the Anna Freud Centre, London. She also led the planning of the service provision for parents and infants in Britain's National Health Service. Many of the contributors are affiliated to the Centre, and the book reflects the work and thinking of this leading institution, which provides mental health treatment for children and young people, undertakes innovative research and offers training to national and international participants. Indeed the book reflects these three pillars of the work of the Centre with the first part dedicated to the theory of parent-infant mental health, the second to the application of parent-infant psychotherapy and the third to research undertaken in this important area of development.
Written by interdisciplinary professionals, the book starts with an interesting chapter by Inge-Martine Pretorius on genetic and environmental contributors to intergenerational transmission of trauma and disorganized attachment, which includes a paragraph on gene-environment interdependency. Allan Schore follows with a discussion on broken attachment bonds and thoughts on developmental neuropsychology and dissociation, which he develops to provide an understanding of the enduring adverse effects on right-brain development and its consequences: inadequate emotional processing and pathological dissociation. Judith Woodhead, of the Society of Analytical Psychology, takes the reader through a beautifully written and detailed process-orientated clinical example of parent-infant psychotherapy in which the infant was able to shift from centring on maternal trauma to newly found relational responses, using the crucible of the parent-infant relationship to develop some differentiation with the mother. Verbalization and emb