Course Description:
Meanings are co-created through actions, as well through language – the “action dialogue.” Forms of correspondence are nonverbal modes of entering into, acknowledging, "going with,” or resonating with the partner’s action dialogue, largely out of awareness. These are split-second procedural action-sequence coordinations with the partner’s actions – in gaze, face, head, hand, foot, and vocal rhythm and prosody. In this presentation I review my five decades of learning to play with infants. I trace through video examples how I learned to see the infant’s nonverbal language, and how I changed. I learned, out of awareness, to do less, and that “less is more;” to go slow, to not try to make the infant smile but rather pay careful attention to the infant’s communication, to join increments of distress, to join the dampened state, to join the cry rhythm. After playing with an infant, I studied the films to try to understand better what worked or did not work in engaging the infant. Gradually I realized that my procedural action dialogue knowledge with the infants helped me emotionally connect with my adult patients. These forms of correspondence bring us to the clinical moment. They are relevant to infant, child and adult treatment. I illustrate them with video examples from infancy and from an adult treatment.
Michigan Council for
Psychoanalysis and Psychotherapy
Contact Information:
Rebecca Hatton, Psy.D
734-709-2183
rebecca.hatton1@gmail.com