Professor Beatrice Beebe

This Legacy Interview featuring Professor Beatrice Beebe and her special guests, pays tribute to her remarkable work and disseminates significant insights garnered over a career spanning more than five decades.

With Beatrice’s adept use of frame-by-frame video and stills footage, witness the profound impact of her contributions on our understanding of infant communication. You will be able to see how she has transformed our perceptions of babies by revealing the intricate interactions between parent and infant that shape lifelong developmental trajectories.

As a distinguished researcher, clinical psychologist, and psychoanalyst, we hear how Beatrice’s work transcends disciplinary boundaries, integrating groundbreaking research in early parent-infant communication with applications to adult treatment.

Through sophisticated split-screen video microanalysis techniques, pioneered in her research lab established at Columbia University with Dr Joseph Jaffe many years ago, Beatrice unveils the hidden intricacies of micro-level nonverbal interactions between babies and their caregivers.

Beatrice’s meticulous examination of subtle behavioural patterns between infants and mothers elucidates how early exchanges serve as harbingers of attachment development and predict future trajectories, even into young adulthood.

And we hear how her methodology has the remarkable ability to predict a four-month-old’s attachment at twelve months and its subsequent attachment in young adulthood!

Beatrice also describes the implications of her research for clinical interventions, offering a framework for therapeutic approaches aimed at fortifying parent-infant relationships, particularly in vulnerable contexts such as maternal depression or trauma. And we hear how these techniques transcend infancy, offering invaluable insights into therapeutic treatment with adult patients.

Accompanying Beatrice were her specially chosen guests:

Frank M. Lachmann, Ph.D

Frank Lachmann, Beatrice’s long-time collaborator and co-author, joins the conversation in a specially recorded interview, to reflect on their extraordinary partnership spanning over five decades. Together, they have bridged the realms of infant research and adult treatments, forging pathways for deeper understanding and application. Frank is a founding faculty member of the Institute for the Psychoanalytic Study of Subjectivity, Training and Supervising Analyst, Postgraduate Center for Mental Health.

Estelle Shane, Ph.D

Estelle is a training/supervising analyst and on the faculty at the New Center for Psychoanalysis. She is a Child, Adolescent, and Adult Analyst. Estelle discusses how Beatrice’s research with infants and mothers has impacted on her work with adults.

Phyllis Cohen, Ph.D

Phyllis is a psychologist/psychoanalyst practicing in New York City. She works with mothers and infants, children, adolescents, adults, and couples and families. Together with Dr. Beatrice Beebe, she co-directed the World Trade Center Project for women who were pregnant and lost their husbands on September 11th 2001.

Beatrice’s research and thinking underpins Phyllis’s Building Blocks Program where she trains therapists to work dyadically with birth mothers and young children in the foster care system.

Trinh Nuguyen, Ph.D

Trinh, a talented young researcher leveraging cutting-edge technology to delve into neurobiological processes in early childhood social interactions, provided a glimpse into the future of infant studies. She is Marie Curie postdoctoral fellow at the Italian Institute of Technology’s Center for Life Nano & Neuroscience in Rome. Her research focuses on neurobiological processes in early childhood social interactions, exploring aspects like rhythmic communicative behaviours and interpersonal neural synchrony. Her work stands as a testament to Beatrice’s enduring influence, shaping the trajectory of research in the field.

We hope that this recording, showcasing Beatrice’s wisdom accumulated over decades of dedicated work, will serve as a valuable resource for present and future generations of researchers and clinicians striving to deepen their understanding of infants and their caregivers.

Interviewer

Beatrice is in conversation with Jane O’Rourke.

Jane O'Rourke, founder of MINDinMIND and a former award-winning BBC Producer turned Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist, brings her storytelling and listening skills to thoughtful conversations with leading mental health clinicians. Her unique background allows her to weave together the personal and professional threads of her guests' journeys, capturing the experiences that have shaped their clinical work.

This recording was made February 28th 2024