Psychoanalytic Therapy with Infants and their Parents - Clinical Guide

In this review of Psychoanalytic Therapy with Infants and their Parents the bottom line is clear: this is a focused clinical guide for therapists working with distressed babies and anxious parents. Bjorn Salomonsson presents a thoughtful, theory-grounded approach that explains how psychoanalytic methods can be adapted for nonverbal patients and their caretakers. The book is most valuable to clinicians seeking practical frameworks for dyadic work and an informed discussion of psychoanalytic concepts such as transference and primal repression in infancy.

Key Features

• Clinical focus: Offers a clear guide to applying psychoanalytic technique to infants and their parents, helping clinicians translate theory into practice.
• Parent work: Explores how to work with parents, especially mothers, to address feeding, sleeping and relational distress affecting the infant.
• Theoretical integration: Discusses major psychoanalytic concepts such as transference and primal repression and how they appear in infant-parent treatment.
• Nonverbal emphasis: Describes ways to make psychoanalytic work possible when the patient has limited language by attending to behavior and relational cues.
• Attachment perspective: Acknowledges attachment ideas while arguing they do not fully explain everyday problems, offering a broader clinical lens.

Who It's For

This book is aimed at psychoanalytic clinicians, infant mental health specialists and psychiatrists who treat dyads where a distressed baby and unhappy parents need urgent help. Trainees in psychoanalytic psychotherapy who want concrete discussion of how classic concepts map onto early infancy will find useful guidance.

It is less suitable for lay readers seeking a parenting manual or for practitioners looking for step-by-step behavioral protocols; the emphasis is clinical interpretation and theory rather than prescriptive checklists.

Pros & Cons

Pros

• Provides a focused clinical framework for working therapeutically with infants and parents.
• Balances theory and clinical examples to clarify how to handle limited verbal communication.
• Addresses parent work explicitly, which is essential for resolving feeding and sleeping problems.

Cons

• Covers psychoanalytic concepts in depth, so readers seeking a simple how-to parenting guide may find it dense.

Specifications

Our Verdict

For clinicians who want a theory-informed, clinically practical discussion of treating infants in the context of parental distress, this book is a compact and useful resource. It is good value for mental health professionals seeking to deepen their understanding of how psychoanalytic concepts apply to early relational work and parent-focused interventions.

Frequently Asked Questions

Does this book explain how to treat nonverbal infants?
Yes, it describes how psychoanalytic technique can be adapted by focusing on behavior, relational cues and parent interactions when the infant has limited language.

Is it suitable for parents looking for tips on feeding or sleep?
No, the book is written for clinicians and emphasizes clinical interpretation rather than simple parenting instructions.

Which psychoanalytic concepts are discussed?
The author covers primal repression, infantile sexuality, transference and the role of attachment concepts in clinical work.