Dyadic psychotherapy for early relationship disorders: A case study

Specific treatment modalities, such as dyadic psychotherapies, have emerged , based on the notion that in cases of very early relational disorders, the patient is the parent-infant relationship. The aim of this paper is to pre sent a case study of such a relational disorder which took place as the res ult of a complex interplay between the infant's biological risk factors and the parents' psychological risk factors. The emphasis is on the technique and the course of the dyadic psychotherapy of the mother and her three-year -old child, where the main goal was to change some of the intrapsychic and interpersonal processes specifically related to pathological motherhood. Th e theoretical background is briefly presented, while emphasizing the criter ia fur choosing one approach among the different kinds of dyadic psychother apy.