Containment, Trauma and Coherence: A Case Presentation and Discussion

Very challenging cases require containment on many levels. This paper illustrates just such a coordinated, multilevel response to a complex treatment situation. Infant mental health specialist Quen Zorrah, RN, MSN, describes her relationship-focused work over 18 months of infant-parent psychotherapy, advocacy, and systems management in a case involving parents and their severely battered infant. Because a reflective individual and group consultation offered essential containment for the therapist, the consultant, Marian Birch, DMH, offers her thoughts on how both individual and the group consultation helped metabolize multiple anxieties and ultimately assisted the therapist, the parents, and community service providers to better respond to the child's physical and emotional trauma.