Björn Salomonsson

Karolinska Institutet | KI · Department of Women's and Children's Health

This paper describes a method for investigating clinical process, Layered Analysis, which combines therapist countertransference reports and multi-faceted microanalytic research approaches. Findings from the application of Layered Analysis to video-recorded micro-events of rupture and repair in four psychoanalytic parent-infant psychotherapy sessio...

Postpartum depression affects every sixth mother, and emotional distress in infants is also common. The need for parent-infant consultations and psychotherapies probably greatly exceeds the number of families who in fact receive qualified help. Nurses at child health centres are the first professionals to meet distressed families. Their readiness t...

This paper investigates a phenomenon observed in parent–infant psychotherapy (PIP). Metaphors emerge in the analyst and, once voiced, they can become tools for understanding the present predicament of mother and/or child. The article contains vignettes from work with a mother and her son, four weeks old when PIP started. They are followed by a vign...

Infants express emotional distress through whining, crying, flailing, silence, etc., which can be viewed as communications that also afflict the caregiver(s). One expressive mode, subtle and often unnoticed except by the parents, is infant gaze avoidance. It often elicits parental feelings of rejection, shame and despair, and may be a reason for se...

Objective Maternal stress and depression in pregnancy and early parenting are associated with decreased maternal sensitivity and infant social-emotional development impairments. This randomized controlled trial explored if a Mindfulness-Based Childbirth and Parenting Program (MBCP) is more beneficial than a Lamaze program for infant’s social-emotio...

Randomized controlled trials (RCTs) demonstrate efficacy of parent–infant psychotherapy, but its applicability and effectiveness in public health care are less known. The method followed is Naturalistic study evaluating Short‐term Psychodynamic Infant–Parent Interventions at Child Health Centers (SPIPIC) in Stockholm, Sweden. One hundred distressed...

This the first in a series of articles on how Psychodynamic Therapy with Infants and Parents (PTIP) can inspire work with adult therapy. PTIP helps infants and parents improve their relationship and facilitate child development. During sessions, developmental hazards are dramatized by parent and baby, giving the therapist first-hand impressions of...

A child's emotional and social development depends on the parents' provision of optimal support. Many parents with perinatal distress experience difficulties in mastering parenthood and seek help from professionals within primary healthcare. A clinical project was launched in Stockholm, where psychodynamic psychotherapists provided short-term consu...

Reflective group supervision with infant healthcare workers has been described in several publications. It aims to enhance their ability to help distressed families, and to comprehend and relieve themselves of the distress that they encounter in such work. The ultimate aim has been formulated as an effort at increasing the professional's reflective...

The article discusses how we can understand, from the perspective of psychoanalytic theory, why and how we are affectively moved by music.

Infants suffer to a considerable degree from disturbances in nursing, sleep, mood, and attachment. Psychotherapeutic methods are increasingly used to help them. According to case reports, psychoanalytic work with infants and mothers has shown deep-reaching and often surprisingly rapid results, both in symptom reduction and in improved relations bet...

L'Autore affronta il problema degli interventi dello psicoanalista nel lavoro madrelattante, individuando nel bambino un destinatario importante, ma spesso trascurato. A tal fine, propone un esempio clinico in cui una telefonata nel corso della seduta precedente aveva suscitato uno stato di irrequietezza nella bambina di tre mesi e angoscia nella m...

Background There is a considerable prevalence of and an increasing attention to emotional problems in families with infants. Yet, knowledge is scant of how to create efficient and accessible mental health services for this population. The study qualitatively explored public health nurses’ conceptions of a clinical project, in which psychotherapists...

Psychodynamic Interventions in Pregnancy and Infancy builds on Björn Salomonsson’s experiences as a psychoanalytic consultant working with parents and their babies. Emotional problems during the perinatal stages can arise and be observed and addressed by a skilled midwife, nurse or health visitor. Salomonsson has developed a method combining nurse...

La psicoterapia de padres-infante, es un campo bastante nuevo en el psicoanálisis que plantea preguntas sobre cómo conceptualizar el proceso clínico. Publicaciones anteriores han usado conceptos semióticos para explicar la comunicación no verbal del terapeuta, e investigado la contratransferencia, incluyendo lo que el bebé podría captar de sus vari...

ADHD is increasingly seen as associated with cerebral dysfunction and caused by it. This development is concomitant with an emphasis on medication, behavioural treatments, and parent training programmes. In contrast, psychoanalytic therapy has receded into the background and is often viewed as inefficient or even noxious. This paper argues that suc...

The paper is based on a single case study of a mother and her daughter, from 5 months to 7½ years. They participated in an rct on mother-infant psychoanalytic treatment, including a follow-up study at 4½ years. The girl was then in child psychotherapy from 6 to 7½ years. The mix of settings allowed for research interviews, video-recordings of the d...

Parent-infant psychotherapy, a rather new field in psychoanalysis, raises questions of how to conceptualize the clinical process. Previous publications have used semiotic concepts to account for the therapist's non-verbal communication and investigated the countertransference, including what the baby might grasp of its variations. The present paper...

This paper draws on Melanie Klein's (unpublished) observational notes of her infant grandson, written primarily in 1938 and 1939. Apart from moving glimpses into a young family's life, the notes contain astute observations of an infant's behavior and emotions. Compared with Klein's published writings, the style is less theoretical and polemical. La...

Los resultados de la investigación observacional entre padres e hijos han estimulado el desarrollo de modelos intersubjetivos de acción psicoterapéutica. Estos modelos han revelado al infante como un socio interactivo del progenitor. Contrariamente, el interés en la descripción de la psique individual del bebé ha disminuido, especialmente los nivel...

An earlier randomized controlled trial (RCT) compared 80 mother-infant dyads in a Stockholm sample. One had received mother-infant psychoanalytic treatment [mother-infant psychoanalytic therapies (MIP) group], and the other received Child Health Center care (CHCC group). Effects were found on mother-reported depression and expert-rated mother-infan...

Psychotherapy with toddlers and parents can focus on promoting attachment, facilitating development and improving interactions. Some techniques provide guidance to the parents, whereas others interpret to them their unconscious fantasies or ‘ghosts’ contributing to the child’s disorder. A recent paper introduced a psychoanalytically oriented techni...

Findings from parent-infant observational research have stimulated the development of intersubjective models of psychotherapeutic action. These models have brought out the infant as an interactive partner with the parent. Conversely, interest in describing the individual psyche of the baby has decreased, especially the unconscious levels of his/her...

Many psychotherapists working with infants and parents have extended their practice to toddler-parent therapy. This paper presents such work, developed from a psychoanalytic mother-infant therapy mode. Like other published therapy techniques, it invites both parent and toddler to take part in treatment. Similarly, it also takes into account the spe...

Abstract This article critically examines the existent evidence base for Psychodynamic Therapy with Infants and Parents (PTIP), specifically focusing on the available RCTs (Randomized Controlled Trials) in the literature. The author also discusses how these studies influenced the design of an RCT of a related novel treatment method, Mother-Infant P...

A randomized controlled trial (RCT) compared two groups of mother–infant dyads in a Stockholm sample. One had received mother–infant psychoanalytic treatment (MIP group) and the other Child Health Center care (CHCC group). Effects were found on mother-reported depression and expert-rated mother–infant relationship qualities and maternal sensitivity...

Abstract 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 ba...

Psychoanalytic Therapy with Infants and Parents provides a clear guide to clinical psychoanalytic work with distressed babies and unhappy parents, a numerous clinical group so often in need of urgent help. Although psychoanalytic work is primarily verbal, and infants may have limited language, this form of treatment is receiving increased attention...

With reference to two case histories, Tessa Baradon indicates that in parentinfant therapy the patient is not defined per se but takes shape and develops in the therapist's mind. Both here and in the therapeutic relationship, the focus may shift from the sufferings of the child to the distress of the parents. In his contribution, Björn Salomonsson...

In parent-infant treatments, babies sometimes exhibit symptoms such as screaming, clinging, and fearful gaze avoidance of the analyst. The paper investigates if such phenomena may be regarded as transference manifestations, and if so, if they appear both in younger and older infants. Based on three case presentations, it is concluded that some babi...

Despite the high prevalence of postnatal depression (PND) and the focus in psychoanalytic theory on the importance of the infant’s primary relationship with the mother, few case studies have been published. This applies to PND mothers in psychoanalysis and mother–infant dyads in psychotherapy. A case of a girl in treatment from 16 to 40 months of a...

This article summarizes experiences of psychoanalytic case presentations in weaving thoughts (WT) peer groups. The format is presented and illustrated using a session with a group of analysts. In this setting, the frame of the presentation is guaranteed by the moderator. One aim is to create a group setting with many parallels to the analytic situa...

Classical psychoanalytic theory draws many concepts from mental processes that are assumed to arise in the infant and influence the adult mind. Still, psychoanalytic practice with mothers and infants has been integrated but little within general psychoanalytic theory. One reason is that only few analysts have utilized such practice to further theor...

Objective: This study introduces an instrument, the Interview of Mother’s Experiences (I-ME), focusing on how the mother’s past and present experiences relate to her psychological state and interaction with the baby. Background: Questionnaires and video-taped interactions are used for assessing dyadic relationship disturbances. Validated interviews...

The author discusses the psychoanalyst's approach in motherinfant treatments. Emphasis is given to the infant as an important, though often neglected, addressee. A clinical example is used in which a telephone call during a prior session triggered fretting in a 3-month-old girl and distress in her mother. It is suggested that in the session, nonver...

A randomized control trial was performed on 75 dyads in Stockholm, Sweden, with infants under 1½ years. It recruited mothers who worried about the babies, themselves as mothers, and/or the mother–baby relationship. Two groups of mother–infant dyads were compared. One received only Child Health Centre care (the “CHCC” group) while the other received...

Mother-infant relationship disturbances occur in three domains: maternal distress, infant functional problems, and relationship difficulties. They constitute common clinical problems. In Sweden, they are usually handled by nurses as part of public Child Health Centre care. Severe cases are referred to child psychiatry services. This randomized cont...

Several factors contribute to the dearth of psychoanalytic treatments and conceptualizations of attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). The author argues that psychoanalysis can contribute to standard treatments of such children. The prerequisites are the child's interest in change and the analyst's insight as to the legitimate aims of suc...

Psychoanalytic theory derives many or its concepts from psychic processes assumed to exist in babies and infants and further assumed to subsequently influence the adult psyche. The author contends that mother-infant psychoanalytic treatment (MIP) is a variant of general psychoanalysis and that many classic psychoanalytic concepts can and should be...

Mother-report questionnaires of infant socioemotional functioning are increasingly used to screen for clinical referral to infantmental health services. The validity of the Ages & Stages Questionnaire: Social Emotional (ASQ:SE; J. Squires, D. Bricker, K. Heo, & E. Twombly, 2002) was investigated in a sample of help-seeking mothers with young infant...

Experiences from mother-infant psychoanalytic treatments help us understand and handle adult psychoanalyses. Babies flood us with non-verbal expressions of their feeling states. Working with a mother who is soothing her baby, the analyst can observe container-contained interactions from another perspective than in a traditional analytic setting and...

The author addresses issues that emerge when we compare psychoanalytic experiences with adults and with infants. Two analyses-one with a 35 year-old woman and one with a 2 week-old boy and his mother-illustrate that infant psychoanalytic experiences help us understand and handle adult transference. However, we cannot extrapolate infant experiences...

Infants suffer to a considerable degree from disturbances in nursing, sleep, mood, and attachment. Psychotherapeutic methods are increasingly used to help them. According to case reports, psychoanalytic work with infants and mothers has shown deep-reaching and often surprisingly rapid results, both in symptom reduction and in improved relations bet...

Children with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) and disorder of attention, motility control, and perception (DAMP) are often sensitive to the analyst's interventions. This is not always due to the literal import of the intervention. The children sometimes react as if the words were dangerous concrete objects, which they must physicall...

This paper brings out one perspective on the experiences of the analytic couple, and transposes it into a general perspective on the analytic process: its aesthetic dimension. It is a combined epistemological and emotional perspective that is open to both participants. By an intense preoccupation with and distance to the object, the subject tries t...

The authors argue that there are good reasons for seriously considering the dynamics of the peer group when discussing psychoanalytical case material. The setting and procedure have to protect and facilitate for the presenter and the group members to work together. The aim of this paper is to discuss the problems connected with presenting and discu...

The authors argue that there are good reasons for seriously considering the dynamics of the peer group when discussing psychoanalytical case material. The setting and procedure have to protect and facilitate for the presenter and the group members to work together. The aim of this paper is to discuss the problems connected with presenting and discu...

The authors argue that there are good reasons for seriously considering the dynamics of the peer group when discussing psychoanalytical case material. The setting and procedure have to protect and facilitate for the presenter and the group members to work together The aim of this paper is to discuss the problems connected with presenting and discus...

The author addresses issues interfacing neuropsychiatry and psychoanalysis. He recommends psychoanalysis for children with Attention Deficit, Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) and Dysfunction in Attention and activity control, Motility control and Perception (DAMP). He attributes its low status in neuropsychiatric treatment recommendations partly to th...

This paper sets out to conceptualize what goes on in the analyst's mind as he listens—and expresses something—to the patient. Bion's ideas of approaching the patient's O, without memory and desire, are discussed. An alternate, more permissive, attitude to desire is suggested. This is based on the idea that containment, instead of denoting a dyadic...