Author Description

This third edition of the book was released after Jeremy Nahum's death and it is dedicated to the memory of three pioneers of the dialogue between psychoanalysis and infant research: Daniel Stern, Berry Brazelton and Jeremy Nahum. The book opens with Daniel S. Schechter's Memories of Dan Stern and Karlen Lyons-Ruth's Tribute to Jeremy Nahum. After the introduction written by the editor, Giuseppe Leo, the development of infant research methodologies is illustrated by the contribution written by Beatrice Beebe, whose 'journey' leads us through the 'creating' of a discipline with its creators, her traveling companions, such as Daniel Stern, Frank Lachmann, Joseph Jaffe and many others. Trevarthen's chapter is a discussion of his work with T. Berry Brazelton. Tronick's contribution focuses on mother-infant dyad as well as on analyst-patient one, conceived as open dynamic systems, capable of meaning making, in which coherence is at best imperfect, and coordination alternates with mismatching. Karlen Lyons-Ruth and Jeremy Nahum, two of the members of the Boston Change Process Study Group, focus on the representational world of the mother, particularly on the assessment of mother's representation of role-confusion in her relation with her child.