Beatrice Beebe, PhD
September 24, 2016
Chairs
Mary O’Farrell, PhD
Gail Winston, MSW
Beatrice Beebe, Ph.D. is Clinical Professor of Medical Psychology (in Psychiatry), College of Physicians & Surgeons, Columbia University; Department of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, New York State Psychiatric Institute, and serves on the faculty of several psychoanalytic institutes in New York City. Currently she is director of a primary prevention project for mothers who were pregnant and widowed on September 11, 2001. She has authored numerous books including The Origins of Attachment: Infant Research and Adult Treatment (2013), Infant Research and Adult Treatment: Co-Constructing Interactions (2002) (both with Lachmann) and most recently The Mother-Infant Interaction Picture Book: Origins of Attachment (with Cohen & Lachmann, 2016).
Beatrice Beebe is renowned for her microanalyses of mother-infant dyads, exploring the wordless period of infancy when internal working models are developed and implicit memories established. Dr. Beebe will explore a view of face-to-face communication that informs both mother-infant interaction and adult treatment. A dyadic systems view of face-to-face communication will set the stage for an understanding of nonverbal communication across the lifespan. This dyadic systems view will be illustrated through research on the four-month origins of one-year attachment, with films and frame-by-frame analyses. This dyadic systems view will also be used to explore processes of nonverbal communication in adult treatment through a new project, “Videotaping the Therapist’s Face.” The analyst’s own nonverbal communication is a pivotal feature of therapeutic action.
Learning Objectives
Through participating in this workshop — the presentations, experiential exercises, and discussions – participants will be able to:
- Discuss what is meant by a dyadic systems view of self- and interactive regulation.
- Apply a dyadic systems view of face-to-face communication to adult treatment.
- Describe differences in the patterns of 4-month interaction associated with 12-month secure versus disorganized infant attachment.
- Differentiate among dysregulations of mother and infant attention, affect, spatial orientation and touch in the origins of disorganized attachment.
- Explain how disturbances in infant experiences of knowing the mother, of being known by the mother, and in knowing oneself characterize the origins of disorganized attachment at four months.
- Recognize the subtlety, rapidity and complexity of early mother-infant interactions.
- Observe patterns of nonverbal communication in adult treatment — such as coordination of the turn taking rhythm, the hand dialogue, and the head dance — and use them to enrich an understanding of therapeutic action.