Emotional | Empirical | Theoretical
Parent Infant Psychotherapy is about getting babies, parents and families back on track. Our comprehensive approach encompasses consultation and assessment, treatment and training. We aim to find and foster good attachments and relationships. We explore the world from the points of view of both the infant and the family. We are then able to identify and address the specific issues for each unique case. Our thinking is guided by “developmental” psychoanalysis, yet we also bear in mind a range of differing theories including neurobiology, psychodynamics, behavioural, cognitive, humanistic, bio-psychological, and sociocultural therapies. Our multi-disciplinary team works with the infant's emotional, cognitive and
physical development and supports parents in finding the best ways to parent their particular child. We work not only with individual families but also with professionals who support families.
It takes a cluster of services to enable all this:
• Parent Infant Clinic -- providing assessments and treatments for infants and their families. Treatments offered include 'Special Child Focus', an intensive family programme for infants exhibiting pre-autistic behaviours.
• School of Infant Mental Health -- providing training for professionals in parent infant psychotherapy; identifying early signs of alarm and early intervention.
• International Pre-Autistic Network -- an organisation (charitable status applied for) dedicated to raising funds for early screening and treatment, and expanding knowledge and research in this field.
Emotional Foundation
We are dedicated professionals whose expertise is the field of early emotions. We look beyond behaviours in the present to find their causes, often the emotional reactivation of past experiences. Together with the families, we delve into the past to come out with an understanding that enables us to help the baby and parents in distress.
The aim of infant-parent psychotherapy is to understand and facilitate normal communication and the development of emotions and relationships. In exploring the internal world of the infant, we therapists focus on the mental representation each parent has of themselves, of each other, and of their baby, and each in relation to the other.
Empirical Foundation
In 1990, Dr Acquarone founded the Parent Infant Clinic to treat babies at the earliest signs of alarm. At the same same, she saw the need for training and so began the School of Infant Mental Health. The Clinic and School were pioneers in treating early signs of autism. Using a psychoanalytic approach modified for use with babies, Dr Acquarone based treatment on intersubjectivity, communication, posture and sensory difficulties. The Clinic was the first to develop a Special Child Focus: Intensive Family Intervention for Babies & Children with Pre-Autistic Behaviours.
Today, this psychodynamic work with babies is called “early intervention” and it is proving to be the big-bang event among parents and professionals. In almost all cases early intervention gets better outcomes quicker because it unites clinical practice with therapy, medicine, social work, and the academic and research disciplines. It is a focused help using everything we know about neurobiological, physical and emotional development to make the presenting problem go away. A lot more is known today about exactly when and where to focus the intervention, in part because of the important work of the professionals involved in our field.
Whether with infants, babies, children, adolescents or adults, Dr Acquarone's entire career has been devoted to the early intervention. Early intervention occupies the powerful spot between acute care and prevention. When it comes to therapy, treating earlier is usually a better strategy than treating later. But there is a trade-off: the earlier the therapist intervenes, the more the therapist needs to know. That's why research and training never stop. And that's why the Parent Infant Clinic works hand-in-hand with the School of Infant Mental Health and why both support the work of the International Pre-Autistic Network.
Theoretical Foundation
In an unlikely twist of science and treatment, psychoanalytic psychotherapy and its lexicon of concepts sometimes known as the “talking cure” is proving to be most useful in treating infants...the “non-talkers”. The field of infant parent psychotherapy is emerging because professionals and parents alike know that more can be done for the baby.
Those professionals, trained and adept at reading the matrix of emotions and “signs of alarm”, act on a mother's intuition or a parent's feeling that something isn't right with their baby. Our ever-evolving knowledge of early development is being integrated into frontline training for practicioners and caregivers.
The field will continue to evolve because the question, “What can we do?” is finally replacing the outdated practice of “Wait and see”.