The Anni Bergman Parent-Infant Program has provided innovative training and high-quality educational experiences to mental health professionals for over 20 years. Our aim is to keep apace with and advance the burgeoning fields of infant observation, infant research, and the psychotherapeutic treatment of parents and infants. Clinical experience and infant research has confirmed that what occurs between parent and infant from the earliest days of life lays the foundation for later cognitive, emotional, and interpersonal functioning. We believe that training professionals in the experience and knowledge of early mental life and relationship is pivotal to helping parents reach their potential in providing the best care they can.
In 1995, a group of analysts at the Contemporary Freudian Society met as a study group to focus on the emerging work and literature on infant development and parent-infant treatment. Members of the group included Anni Bergman, Rita Reiswig, Phyllis Ackman, Abby Adams-Silvan, Michelle Asher Dunn, Laura Benedek, Phyllis Beren, Lynne Hofer, Hannah Nadler, and Lynne Rubin.
Lynne Barnett and Karen Proner from the Tavistock Clinic in London visited for a one-day workshop and showed a vignette from the film "Ways of Seeing." The film documented an observation of a mother and child from birth to age fifteen. Discussion focused on a sequence when the baby was 5 months old, during which he reached for and mouthed a sharp kitchen grater. The mother didn't stop him, and he didn't look at her. The group felt shocked and surprised by the disturbing moment, and viscerally affected by the exposure to in-vivo parent-infant interactions. Anni Bergman pointed out that although what was observed was disturbing, no single episode necessarily indicated a pattern that would be sustained. Stemming from her earlier work with Margaret Mahler at the Masters Children's Center, she encouraged the group to see the range and possibility of repair in the evolution of a parent-child relationship.
The study group became interested in training professionals in infant observation as a way to directly observe and experience nonverbal interactions and bodily communication, and to relate those to the transference and countertransference phenomena in the psychoanalytic setting. In 1996, the study group offered a mini course at the Contemporary Freudian Society in infant development and infant observation. The following year, Anni Bergman and Rita Reiswig launched the Three-Year Training in Parent-Infant Studies, a course of study built on the foundation of infant observation, theories of infant development, and parent-infant treatment. In 2006, the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research joined the Contemporary Freudian Society as a co-sponsor of the program. Sally Moskowitz, a graduate of the program, became one of the co-directors. At that time, the program was also renamed the Anni Bergman Parent-Infant Training Program to publicly acknowledge and honor the influence of Anni Bergman's contributions to the field of psychoanalytic work with parents, infants, and young children.
Lynne Barnett and Karen Proner from the Tavistock Clinic in London visited for a one-day workshop and showed a vignette from the film "Ways of Seeing." The film documented an observation of a mother and child from birth to age fifteen. Discussion focused on a sequence when the baby was 5 months old, during which he reached for and mouthed a sharp kitchen grater. The mother didn't stop him, and he didn't look at her. The group felt shocked and surprised by the disturbing moment, and viscerally affected by the exposure to in-vivo parent-infant interactions. Anni Bergman pointed out that although what was observed was disturbing, no single episode necessarily indicated a pattern that would be sustained. Stemming from her earlier work with Margaret Mahler at the Masters Children's Center, she encouraged the group to see the range and possibility of repair in the evolution of a parent-child relationship.
The study group became interested in training professionals in infant observation as a way to directly observe and experience nonverbal interactions and bodily communication, and to relate those to the transference and countertransference phenomena in the psychoanalytic setting. In 1996, the study group offered a mini course at the Contemporary Freudian Society in infant development and infant observation. The following year, Anni Bergman and Rita Reiswig launched the Three-Year Training in Parent-Infant Studies, a course of study built on the foundation of infant observation, theories of infant development, and parent-infant treatment. In 2006, the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research joined the Contemporary Freudian Society as a co-sponsor of the program. Sally Moskowitz, a graduate of the program, became one of the co-directors. At that time, the program was also renamed the Anni Bergman Parent-Infant Training Program to publicly acknowledge and honor the influence of Anni Bergman's contributions to the field of psychoanalytic work with parents, infants, and young children.
Directors
Anni Bergman
Founding Director Emerita
Founding Director Emerita
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Anni Bergman, Ph.D. (1919-2021) was a Founding Director of the Anni Bergman Parent-Infant Program. Born in Vienna, she immigrated to the United States in 1939. She graduated with a degree in music from the University of California and eventually settled in New York City. While in California she met the psychoanalyst Christine Olden, who became an important influence. In 1959 Dr. Bergman began to work with Margaret Mahler on the observational study of the separation-individuation process. The groundbreaking book The Psychological Birth of the Human Infant, co-authored with Margaret Mahler and Fred Pine, grew from this seminal observational study. Following her work with Dr. Mahler, Dr. Bergman continued to practice and teach dyadic work with children and their parents. Some of this work has been published in her collected papers, Ours, Yours, Mine: Mutuality and the Emergence of the Separate Self, which was written in collaboration with Maria F. Fahey. Dr. Bergman received her Ph.D. in clinical psychology from the City University of New York, where, as a member of the faculty, she co-founded and directed a therapeutic nursery for preschool inner-city children with autism.
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She was an active member, supervisor, and teacher at the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, New York University’s Postdoctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, and the Contemporary Freudian Society, where she was also a Training Analyst. Among the many papers she has written are To Be or Not To Be Separate (1993, Psychoanalytic Review), On the Development of Female Identity (1987, Psychoanalytic Inquiry), Revisiting Rapprochement in the Light of Contemporary Developmental Theories (2004, Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association, with Ilan Harpaz-Rotem), and The Team Approach to the Treatment of a Traumatized Mother and Child (2011, Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy, with Andrea Remez). Since 2002, she was part of a team of therapists working with Beatrice Beebe on The Mothers, Infants, and Young Children of September 11, 2001 Project. Her influence has been widespread over many generations of students, therapists, and the field of psychoanalysis.
Rita Reiswig
Founding & Co-Director
Founding & Co-Director
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Rita Reiswig, M.S., L.P. is a child and adult psychoanalyst and a mother-infant psychotherapist. She is a founder and co-director of the Anni Bergman Parent Infant Program (ABPIP). She is a Training Analyst and a faculty member of the Child Analytic Training Program at CFS and is a committee member of the Integrated Training Track in child and adult psychoanalysis at IPTAR. Since 2002, she has been part of a team of therapists working with Beatrice Beebe on The Mothers, Infants, and Young Children of September 11, 2001 Project, including the paper “What Is Transmitted from the Mother to the Child About the Father Lost on 9/11: Preliminary Sketches of Three Styles of Transmission," in the Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy (2011). She has consulted in an outreach capacity with Little Sisters of the Assumption and Dominican Sisters day care programs, working with staff and facilitating mother-infant groups. She co-directs and is a therapist in the ABPIP Home-Visiting Project, co-teaches the weekly seminar in the three-year ABPIP, and co-directs the research project. She has taught infant observation since
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1997 both at the ABPIP and, via web conferencing, to mental health professionals in China attending the Chinese American Psychoanalytic Alliance. She has presented her work on parent-infant treatment to various conferences and institutes. She maintains a private practice in New York City and East Hampton, New York., working with parents and infants, children, and adults.
Sally Moskowitz
Co-Director
Co-Director
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Sally Moskowitz, Ph.D. received her Doctorate in Clinical Psychology in 1978 from The City University of New York. There she worked on her doctoral research, an infant study, with Anni Bergman and from 1979-1983, co-directed with Anni Bergman the CUNY nursery program for autistic children. She is a graduate of New York University’s Post-doctoral Program in Psychotherapy and Psychoanalysis, the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research, and the Anni Bergman Parent-Infant Program. She is a Fellow, Training Analyst, Supervisor and on the Faculty at IPTAR and is Associate Dean on IPTAR’s Institute Board and is also a member of the Contemporary Freudian Society. She has taught courses on infancy, latency and adolescence, working with children on the autistic spectrum, gender and sexuality, and adoption. She currently teaches the one-year Infant Observation Seminar in IPTAR’s Integrated Training Track in child and adult psychoanalysis. She co-directs and is a therapist in the ABPIP Home-Visiting Project, co-teaches the weekly seminar in the three-year ABPIP, and co-directs the research project.
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Dr. Moskowitz has been a Consultant to the Bushwick Impact Center, a community-based family center. Since 2002, she has been part of a team of therapists working with Beatrice Beebe on The Mothers, Infants, and Young Children of September 11, 2001 Project. Dr. Moskowitz’s papers include Primary Maternal Preoccupation Disrupted by Trauma and Loss published in The Journal of Infant, Child, and Adolescent Psychotherapy (2011) and by Routledge Press (2012), Representations of Mother in the Daughter of a Single, Gay Father published in the Journal of Infant Observation (2010) and in Infant Observation: Creating Transformative Relationships edited by Frances Salo Thompson (2014), and Playing Dead: An Unconscious Fantasy, Bodily Focused Defenses and their Roots in Infancy in Journal of the American Psychoanalytic Association (2005). She has presented her work on parent-infant treatment to various conferences and institutes. Dr. Moskowitz has a private practice working with infants and parents, and children in psychotherapy, and with adults in psychotherapy and psychoanalysis.
Anni Bergman Interview at Sigmund Freud University, Vienna, 2012:
