Discussion of “Psychodynamic Therapies with Infants and Parents: A Critical Review of Treatment Methods”

Björn Salomonsson does an excellent job critically reviewing a variety of psychodynamic therapies with infants and parents (PTIP), including methods which are less well known to American audiences, particularly those from the French and Scandinavian traditions. Thus, this review article is both a gift and a challenge to American readers and an obvious challenge to an American discussant immersed in (1) conflict and compromise formation theory (or as is better known as American Ego Psychology) and in (2) systematic empirical approaches to psychodynamic concepts and treatment. Can one objectively evaluate theories and methods which rely on assumptions unlike those to which one has been accustomed? These difficulties must be borne in mind and overcome because, perhaps unintentionally, Salomonsson's contribution is valuable for all psychodynamic clinicians and researchers. This article raises ideas which may help us in our most important task of refining methods to evaluate the nature of the mutative agents in psychodynamic and psychoanalytic therapies.

Salomonsson notes that the psychoanalytic study of the mother-infant dyad, one of the last patient categories to be studied psychoanalytically, began with the work of Selma Fraiberg and Françoise Dolto. Contrasting the American and the European literature, Salomonsson