The opposition between psychoanalysis and systematic interdisciplinary research is to be regretted. The target article attempts to bridge the intellectual divide and for this aim as well as the intellectual adroitness shown it is to be celebrated. Much harder to understand is the high level of affect generated by the debate. Accusations of "doublethink" are helpful. The present paper, like the target paper it follows, attempts to develop an understanding of the position of those who are categorically opposed to interdisciplinary systematic research linked to psychoanalysis. Appreciating the perspective of those deeply opposed to such work could help to create a shared agenda from which our troubled discipline could benefit. This is predicated on the possibility of an open collegial dialogue which this journal was founded to create.

Despite important recent progress in understanding disorganized attachment, we still lack a full understanding of the mechanisms of disorganized attachment formation and transmission prior to 12 months. In this paper we lay out our recommendations for the study of the 4-month origins of disorganized attachment. In our subsequent Paper II we report on the results of a large empirical study that was conducted along the lines we recommend in Paper I. Both Papers I and II are based on Beebe, Jaffe, Markese, Buck, Chen, Cohen, Bahrick, Andrews, Feldstein (2010). In Paper I we describe our proposal that a detailed microanalysis of 4-month mother-infant face-to-face communication would further inform our understanding of the process of disorganized attachment formation between mother and infant. Such a microanalysis would allow us to characterize the nature of the 4-month infant's procedural representations, or emerging "internal working models" of attachment.

A microanalysis of 4-month mother-infant face-to-face communication predicted 12-month infant disorganized (vs. secure) attachment outcomes in an urban community sample. We documented a dyadic systems view of the roles of both partners, the roles of both self- and interactive contingency, and the importance of attention, orientation and touch, and as well as facial and vocal affect, in the co-construction of attachment disorganization. The analysis of different communication modalities identified striking intrapersonal and interpersonal intermodal discordance or conflict, in the context of intensely distressed infants, as the central feature of future disorganized dyads at 4 months. Lowered maternal contingent coordination, and failures of maternal affective correspondence, constituted maternal emotional withdrawal from distressed infants. This maternal withdrawal compromises infant interactive agency and emotional coherence. We characterize of the nature of emerging internal working models of future disorganized infants as follows: Future disorganized infants represent states of not being sensed and known by their mothers, particularly in moments of distress; they represent confusion about both their own and their mothers' basic emotional organization, and about their mothers' response to their distress. This internal working model sets a trajectory in development which may disturb the fundamental integration of the person. The remarkable specificity of our findings has the potential to lead to more finely-focused clinical interventions.