After Selma Fraiberg’s pioneering experiences in the USA, infant-parents psychotherapies underwent in the last 40 years a huge development, with a wide range of approaches and theories. A model of interaction and dialogue between psychoanalytic theories of primal psychic functioning and theoretic-clinical achievements by clinical work with infants and parents is proposed in this paper. Hence, the potential of these psychotherapies to open new perspectives of early psychic functioning and its origins is highlighted, as well as psychoanalytic theories ability to foster the development of theory and technique of psychotherapeutic process in infant-parents psychotherapies. While examining the work of a number of authors and clinicians engaged in these fields, specific attention is given to psychic birth as a relational process, early forms of representation and primal undifferentiation. Finally, the primal role of sound and rhythmic dimensions in the process of psychic birth is pointed to.
Keywords: Infant-parents psychotherapy, psychoanalytic theories of the primal, birth of psyche as a relational process, early forms of representation, primal undifferentiation, sound and rhythmic dimensions.