The First Year and the Rest of Your Life: Movement, Development, and Psychotherapeutic Change

The movement repertoire that develops in the first year of life is a language in itself and conveys desires, intentions, and emotions. This early life in motion serves as the roots of ongoing nonverbal interaction and later verbal expression – in short, this language remains a key element in communication throughout life.

In their path-breaking book, gestalt therapist Ruella Frank and psychoanalyst Frances La Barre give readers the tools to see and understand the logic of this nonverbal realm. They demonstrate how observations of fundamental movement interactions between babies and parents cue us to coconstructed experiences that underlie psychological development. Numerous clinical vignettes and detailed case studies show how movement observation opens the door to understanding problems that develop in infancy and also those that appear in the continuing nonverbal dimension of adult communication.

Their user-friendly nonverbal lexicon – foundational movement analysis – enhances perception of emerging interactive patterns of parents and their babies, couples, and individual adults within psychotherapy. Clinicians in any setting will find this book to be a masterful application of infant research and movement theory that significantly augments clinical acumen and promotes greater understanding of the nonverbal basis of all relationships.

Ruella Frank, Ph.D., is founder and director of the Center for Somatic Studies, and faculty at Gestalt Associates for Psychotherapy and the New York Institute for Gestalt Therapy. She teaches throughout the United States, Europe, and Mexico and is the author of articles and chapters in various publications, as well as Body of Awareness: A Somatic and Developmental Approach to Psychotherapy (Gestalt Press, 2001), available in four languages.

Frances La Barre, Ph.D., is a licensed psychologist-psychoanalyst in private practice in New York City, where she works with individual adults, children, and couples. She is Adjunct Professor and co-Director of the Parent-Infant/Toddler Research Nursery at Pace University, and a supervisor and faculty member at the Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy Study Center and the Institute for Contemporay Psychotherapy. She lectures and teaches both in the United States and Europe. Her book, On Moving and Being Moved: Nonverbal Behavior in Clinical Practice (Analytic Press, 2001), and articles are known for her unique application of movement studies to psychotherapy.