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The baby's place in the world.

Donald Winnicott has stated that the “inner world of the mother is the external world of the baby.” One of the goals of the 2004 WAIMH Congress held in Melbourne was to explore the nature of the many worlds that the infant experiences. The papers in this special issue of the Infant Mental Health Journal represent the plenary presentations at the Congress; each paper explores critical dimensions of the infant’s developing world. The Congress was characterized by a high level of collaboration and commitment to exploring the needs of infants and their families across many cultural and social contexts in many different countries and communities in the world. The world of the infant clearly extends beyond the important relationship between herself and her mother. James McHale reflects upon the difficulties that many infant mental health specialists working with very young children have in adequately describing and intervening with family members beyond the mother/infant dyad. He describes his research, and that of others, that demonstrates a stability in the way a parental couple goes about the process of parenting their child. Using this elegant research, which has real implications for the way we intervene with infants and families, he reflects that it is only recently—particularly since the work of Mrazek 1985 —that the family systems view has entered the consciousness of many of those working with infants and families. Why has it been so hard, he asks? In attempting to answer some of these questions, McHale stresses the importance of co-parenting; the mother and father as the parenting unit, as described in his own work and that of Elizabeth Fivaz-Depeursinge. McHale describes four durable patterns of family alliance which have their origins during the first few postnatal months. He demonstrates how important it is to have men involved, given their capacity as a potential therapeutic resource. He asserts that fathers must be involved as part of the couple, not simply just “being there” in the therapeutic process, but actively engaged in the therapeutic process. This research emphasizes how we