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The post-discharge follow-up of the newborn at risk has a therapeutic significance, and so the methodology employed there is similar to that adopted in cases requiring actual treatment. In these cases, changes are introduced in response to the clinical picture (as illustrated in greater detail below). During the examination it is very important to think about the degree of weakening of the life instinct which all newborns at risk undergo, both on account of possible brain damage and because of the traumatic therapeutic procedures. It must also be borne in mind that the newborn tends to believe that these seriously persecutory situations originate in the mother. Given its specific mental apparatus, it is in fact very perceptive of its mother's anxiety, which, especially at the beginning, hinders the adequacy of her response to the child's complex communications (Salzberger-Wittenberg, 1990). Therefore the mother's anxiety is experienced by the child as extremely threatening and imminent, and this aggravates the child's emotional difficulties.
This situation has often been confirmed during my work and experience of prevention techniques. A discouraged mother