The theory of psychoanalysis has always relied on speculations about the infant's mind, but its clinical practice was slow in taking an interest in babies and their parents. The therapy methods that nevertheless have evolved during the last 50 years differ in their emphasis on support or insight, which roles they attribute to mother and baby in therapy, and to what extent they focus on the unconscious influences in mother and baby, respectively. They also differ to what extent their theories rely on classical psychoanalysis, attachment psychology, developmental psychology, and infant research. Each method also contains assumptions, most often tacit, about which kinds of samples for which they are most suited.

The article describes the most well-known modes of psychodynamic therapy with infants and parents (PTIP). There is a certain emphasis on methods that are less known to the U.S. readership, such as the French and Scandinavian traditions. It submits them and the other methods to a critical review.