Beatrice Beebe - Infant Research and Adult Treatment: Co-constructing Interactions

Not only is this book the result of an ongoing dialogue between us, but it is also based on an ongoing dialogue with our students, our colleagues, and our patients. We would like to thank the psychoanalytic communities that have encouraged our fascination with the relevance of infant research for psychoanalysis: for both of us, the New York University Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis and the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity. In addition, for Beatrice Beebe, the Columbia Psychoanalytic Center; and, for Frank Lachmann, the Postgraduate Center.

We are grateful to the mothers and infants who gave generously of their time to make this research possible. All the infant research took place at New York State Psychiatric Institute, Columbia University, together with Joseph Jaffe, M.D. and Stanley Feldstein, Ph.D., lifelong collaborators of Beatrice Beebe. Dr. Stephen Ruffins is a member of Dr. Beebe's research team.

Dr. Beebe's research students who coded videotapes second-by-second and participated in the interpretation of the data were essential collaborators in this work: Rhonda Davis, Helen Dimitriodes, Nancy Freeman, Psy.D., Donna Demitri Friedman, MSW, Patty Goodman, Psy.D., Michaela Hager-Budny, Sarah Hahn-Burke, Psy.D., Liz Helbraun, Ph.D., Allyson Hentel, M.A., Tammy Kaminer, Ph.D., Sandra Triggs Kano, Limor Kaufman-Balamuth, Ph.D., Kristen Kelly, Marina Koulomzin, Psy.D., Greg Kushnick, Paulette Landesman, MSW, Tina Lupi, MSW, Lisa Marquette, Ph.D., Irena Milentijevic, Psy.D., Jillian Miller, Alan Phalan, Ph.D., Danielle Kramer Phalen, Ph.D., Jill Putterman, Ph.D., Jane Roth, M.S.W., and Shanee Stepakoff, Ph.D. We thank the volunteers who helped make everything happen: Ron Avirom, Ph.D., Emma Barnstable, Lisa Braun, Emily Brodie, Emlyn Capili, Lauren Cooper, Terri Chmurak, Clare Davidson, Julia Dizenko, Lauren Ellman, Carlin Flora, Leah Feuerstein, Yael Hait, Jennifer Kohns, Eva Kourniotis, Catherine Man, Sara Markese, Allison Mercado, Debra Posner, Nancy Richardson, Michael Ritter, Alison Rodin, liana Rosenberg, Ronit Roth, Nick Seivert, Sonia Sonpal, Marina Tasopoulos, Tracey Toon, and Lillia Treyger.

Thanks to Samuel Anderson, Ph.D., Howard Andrews, Ph.D., Anni Bergman, Ph.D., Sidney Blatt, Ph.D., Phyllis Cohen, Ph.D., Marvin Hurvich, Ph.D., Sharon Koffman, Ph.D., Ilene Lefcourt, Jennifer Lyne, Wordy Olesker, Ph.D., and Donald Ross, Ph.D., who consulted on various phases of the research.

Parts of this book are based on or excerpted from earlier work: , from Beebe et al. (2000).

We thank John Kerr, who was an inspired and dedicated editor, as well as Eleanor Starke Kobrin, Paul Stepansky, and the staff of The Analytic Press.

For the past 30 years we have been engaged with one another, and with our colleagues, seeking to integrate infant research and adult treatment. In the course of this dialogue we have taken ideas from each realm and examined their relevance for the other. Although empirical evidence from infant research and the adult psychoanalytic process are different realms of discourse, nevertheless, each is germane to the other. Psychoanalysis has influenced our approach to infant research, and infant research has influenced our understanding of psychoanalysis.

Although there are many domains within infant research, in this book we address only one, the second-by-second analysis of face-to-face interactions. This focus omits consideration of such related issues as the regulation of sleep-, wake-, feeding-, and alone-states. However, face-to-face interaction research is specifically relevant to psychoanalysis because it describes the origin of relatedness and patterns of nonverbal communication that continue to operate in similar forms across the lifespan. Although most research in this domain examines mother and infant, the work we present is generally applicable to fathers and infants as well.

Face-to-face research has provided a view of early interactions as subtle, complex, and fascinatinga far cry from the psychoanalytic view of the "global undifferentiated" infant that prevailed when we started our collaboration. This research shows that interactions of face, voice, and orientation between mother and infant are "co-constructed." Although both partners contribute to the organization of the ongoing exchange, their contributions are not necessarily similar or equal. This research reveals how the mind is organized in interaction.

Infant research can be used to imagine the patient's early history and provides many more metaphors and scenarios than previously available. However, that has not been our main purpose in this book. Instead, we have used infant research to conceptualize the nonverbal and implicit interactive process itself within psychoanalysis. The usual level of psychoanalytic discourse entails an explicit, verbal, and symbolic narrative; but an interactive process that is implicit and nonverbal proceeds in parallel.

A shift toward interactive models and systems thinking can be found in the thinking of various psychoanalytic theorists throughout the 20th century. What is new in contemporary psychoanalytic views is the increasing centrality of the interactive process itself. This recent shift has been limited primarily to the verbal domain and associated feeling, reveries, and subjective states. In infant research, however, interactive models and systems thinking have long been used to describe the nonverbal domain of implicit communication through face, voice, and orientation.