[Significance of research with infants for operationalized psychodynamic diagnosis (OPD) during the first year of life]

Abstract

The early development of the infant and of the infant-parent relationship contains complex processes. These processes are built on the relational competency of the infant and of the parents and are characterized by fast changes and affective integration. The developmental process can easily be disturbed. Early disturbances can have severe consequences for further development. The process of early diagnostic in infant psychiatry faces many difficulties: the fast changes during early development, the strong connection between individual and interactional processes, and the uncertainty of differentiating between normality and pathology during this early age. The operationalized psychodynamic diagnostic can better deal with this developmental phase than traditional classification systems, which only address the individual phenomenology, because in the OPD there is a special axis for the relational level. Modern theories and research results on early development and on the early parent-infant triad offer a favorable background for such a classification of relations.