Working with Parents and Infants

The book examines the field of early emotions and the fact that the human body has frequently been excluded from psychological and relational processes. Central to the book is an examination of the ways in which the unconscious life of the mind expresses itself through a woman's body, and conversely, the manner in which the body's experiences impinge upon the mind.Drawing on the case of a difficult mother-infant relationship, infant observations, psychoanalytic literature and work in neighboring disciplines, Sansone considers how early experiences of touch and movement become stored within the body and how such experiences may be acted out in adult life and affect the mother-infant early relationship. Pregnancy and childbirth are a crucial time for parents, since they reactivate unresolved issues, which left untreated, can develop more complex chronic conditions or even pathology.In contrast to the dualism of Western science and medicine, the author assumes the embodiment of the human mind, the inseparability of psyche and soma. She also explores the embodiment of emotional health as well as of emotional illness and their foundation in earliest experiences.