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Doi's paper has successfully spelled out several important points on amae: (1) Amae is an interpersonal process; (2) the origin of amae probably lies in the infant-mother relationship: (3) the concept of amae provides no absolute standard to classify a behavior in terms of amae;, (4) amae is best understood as a combination of patterns of behaviors; and (5) amae is g very broad concept. Implicit, but insufficiently recognized in Doi's paper, is the concept that amae is an interpersonal process of negotiation that is continuously revised throughout life. it is not just a motivational factor embedded in. an individual: underneath the surface phenomenon of amae, an amaeru-ing person usually allows the other to feel needed, valued, and respected. Operationalizing the concept of amae for international research requires that the term be defined in relation to a combination or patterns of behaviors observable in the infant/child-mother dyad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper of the Change Process Study Group of Boston addresses an unsolved conceptual problem: How does one codify intersubjective states? The transfer of concepts from infant research to the adult therapeutic dyad is more than an analogy in that certain primitive aspects of mind appear in infancy, but persist throughout life. The regulation of consciousness is one salient example. The adult therapeutic dyad and the mother–infant dyad can be viewed as self-regulating dynamic systems that are also self-reparative. The concept of implicit relational knowledge is offered as an alternative way of thinking about internal object relations. © 1998 Michigan Association for Infant Mental Health [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the manipulation of mental representations, particularly in relation to the psychoanalytic concepts of conscious or unconscious fantasy. A distinction is made between the unconscious phenomenal (experiential) aspect of representations and the nonexperiential, quasi-structural aspect. The concept of the representational world is described and elaborated, and its development is seen as a consequence of the infant's interaction with itself and The external world, Processes such as identification and projection can be seen in terms of changes in self and object representations, and the same is true for all the mechanisms of defense. The content of unconscious wishes is transformed, by use of such mechanisms, into representations that are acceptable to consciousness, Major transformations of unconscious representational content occur in the process of creating unconscious (preconscious) fantasy, and further transformations are frequently needed before such (preconscious) fantasies are permitted access to consciousness. The concept of projective identification is considered in the light of the ideas put forward in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Comments on the commitment to publishing both interdisciplinary and international research and clinical papers in the field of infant mental health for the September 1992 issue of the "Infant Mental Health Journal" in the U.S. Theoretical papers included among the articles published in the issue; inclusion of the different disciplinary concerns as part of the editorial process; Illustration of how the editorial process has been handled.

The conceptual and methodological framework of an observational method designed to measure the interconnectedness between individual development and early relationships is presented. This model is based on our growing understanding of the intense participation of the baby in determining his or her own development. Research on the manifestations of initiatives, environmental responses, and interactive happenings (confrontations, negotiations, encounters) has yielded an instrument defined in several different ways. Twenty-eight mother-infant pairs are presented in this paper. Initiative is considered an important manifestation of the expression of the infant as a differentiated being. It is anticipated that the method presented in this paper will be adequate to measure the development of the infant's self in relationship to his or her environment. It is proposed that the progressive constitution of the self will depend upon an adequate resolution of the basic formula preserving spontaneity/compliance during development. Specific interactive phenomena including negotiation and occurrence of encounters will allow for the identification of particular features of each dyad. An objective of the research is to make predictions about the future development of both the infant as an individual and the dyad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In his paper, Caruso argues that discussing early entrance into infant day care as a risk factor for later development is neither justified based on the current body of available research nor useful in directing future investigations. He suggests we should return to the use of associational terminology in reporting on infant day care. This paper addresses Caruso's interpretation of a risk factor conceptualization and suggests an alternative theoretical model within which to view the connections between early day care attendance, mother-child attachment, and subsequent developmental problems. One major factor influencing the debate about risk status and infant day care is the significance different researchers attribute to outcomes of insecure attachment. This reply contends that the developmental consequences of early insecurity may be more detrimental to overall adaptation than Caruso suggests. Further, whereas limiting the reading of research results to purely associational findings may lead to less ideological controversy, it may not be the best strategy for generating hypotheses regarding the interactive roles that varying early ecological environments and parent-child relationship patterns may have on child development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, elements of early mother—child interaction are related to later cognitive and linguistic outcomes in a sample of 53 high social risk mothers and their preschoolers. Mother—child interaction was observed longitudinally when the children were 13 and 20 months old. Multiple regression analyses were used to predict cognitive and linguistic outcomes at 3 and 5 years form measures of early mother—child interaction. The results indicated that the quality of early mother—child interaction was a significant predictor of preschool cognitive and linguistic outcomes. This was shown to be true regardless of the contribution of the mother's IQ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dealing with the psychological issues involved in perinatal loss exposes the medical, nursing, and midwifery staff not only to parents' distress but also their own feelings of impotence and frustration. This often leads to inadequate management of the situation, which may have long-term deleterious effects on parents and affect staff personally and professionally. Thus, mental health professionals should not only address their interventions to parents, but to staff as well, potentiating the latter's role as mental health providers. The skills needed for this kind of task involve creativity and flexibility, as well as the capacity to adapt traditional training to the active participation needed in dealing with perinatal loss. The present paper is based upon the author's 15 years' experience in consultation/liaison in this field and describes the work carried out based on case discussion, group work, and, specially, video-recorded interviews with parents and staff accompanied by written material providing guidelines for management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, recent studies of the effects of prenatal cocaine abuse and other toxic substances on infant behavior and development during early infancy are critically reviewed. The inevitable conclusion from this review is that compromising main effects of single drugs such as cocaine on infant behavior and development have not been reliably established. It is argued that the tong-term developmental outcome of prenatally drug-exposed infants cannot be fully understood without a thorough consideration of other confounding factors associated with prenatal drug use, such as the quality of the infant's postnatal caregiving environment. Specifically, it is argued that the infant's ability to resolve macro-level developmental tasks during early infancy such as physiologic and behavioral state regulation, sustained face-to-face interaction, and joint attention to objects is primarily determined by dyadic processes at a micro-level; namely, via the communicative and affective mutually regulated processes established over time by the exposed infant and its caregiver. Critically, these processes are affected both by the biological competence Of the infant and by the protective or disruptive role of the caregiving environment. Both caregiver and infant factors associated with cocaine exposure that may disrupt the regulatory capacity of the dyad are described, and illustrations of how resulting dyadic dysregulation may preclude the infant's successful resolution of current and future developmental tasks are provided. Thus it is argued that to understand the effects of cocaine on development we must understand the process of mutual regulation of the cocaine-exposed dyad. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper calls attention to the plight of children exposed to various traumas associated with wars and other natural disasters around the world. Little systematic attention has been paid to the mental health needs of child survivors of armed conflict. Our observations and experiences around the world would suggest that there are significant differences in the degree to which children have been prepared in anticipation of exposure to violence and in interventions applied after their exposure. It is the authors' impression that prevention and intervention can be quite powerful when employed in these situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Infant sleep problems have become prevalent as complaints of parents to clinicians during the first 2 years of the child's life. This paper reviews (1) identification of multiple etiological sources for infant sleep problems from a systems perspective, (2) the assessment of sleep disturbance, and (3) the application of intervention methods to the appropriate component of system dysfunction. These areas are reviewed by integrating research findings with clinical vignettes from our practice as pediatric sleep clinicians. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although not all abused children grow up to, be abusive parents, it is well known that people who were severely mistreated by their parents as compared to those who were not are at higher risk for mistreating their children. It has also been shown that abusive parents often have unrealistic expectations for their children-expectations based on distorted perceptions of their children's needs, feelings, and abilities, In this paper, we examine the utility of new methods developed in social psychology to study: (1) the impact of abuse on the structure and content of interpersonal and self-perception and (2) the interrelationships among an abused mother's social and self-perception, the quality of her interactions with her child, and the child's development. Case studies will be presented to illustrate how these new methods reflect risk for abuse as predicted independently by clinicians treating the cases. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epidemiologists and psychoanalysts have been equally concerned about the intergenerational concordance of disturbed patterns of attachment. Mary Main's introduction of the Adult Attachment Interview (AAI) has provided the field with an empirical tool for examining the concordance of parental and infant attachment patterns, in the context of a prospective study of the influence of parental patterns of attachment assessed before the birth of the first child upon the child's pattern of attachment to that parent at 1 year and at 18 months, the Anna Freud Centre—University College London Parent-Child Project reported a significant level of concordance between parental security and the infant's security with that parent. In the context of this study, a new measure, aiming to assess the parent's capacity for understanding mental states, was developed and is reported on in this paper. The rating of Reflective-Self Function, based upon AAI transcripts, correlated significantly with infant security classification based on Strange Situation assessments. The philosophical background and clinical importance of the measure are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a discussion of the issue of infant day care as a risk condition for later developmental problems. It focuses on the appropriateness of using a risk factor conceptualization for describing research on infant day care and on important research questions that have largely been ignored in recent discussions of the effects of infant day care experience on development, A number of criteria for assigning risk factor status to associational findings are discussed, and it is suggested that this approach does not seem justified with regard to the current research on infant day care. Several studies that have examined infants' actual experiences in day care settings and compared these to home-reared infants' experiences are discussed as an example of important research that broadens our approach to understanding this complex issue. It is suggested that the discussion of research in this area return to the traditional terminology of associational findings rather than the narrow conceptualization of risk conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]