A baby cries persistently and looks away from his mother. The mother makes soothing noises and seems to be doing all the ."right" things, yet there is a quality of detachment about her responses; she looks embarrassed and awkward. Her face is fixed in a half smile. She isn't able to soothe her baby. Why is that? This is a mother who has spent very little time with her baby and isn't very comfortable with him. She is afraid of failing as a mother. As a child she didn't receive empathic parenting herself, and never really wanted to become a mother. She is certainly trying to do the right thing and trying to understand him: she comes up with various interpretations of her baby's behaviour, deciding at first that he must be hungry (yet he rejects the bottle she offers) and then concluding "he's angry". Despite these attempts to make sense of his behaviour, she doesn't convey a willingness to enter into his experience or to feel with her baby.
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