Tributes to Colwyn Trevarthen
by Kevin Nugent and Joanna Hawthorne
Colwyn Trevarthen and the Discovery of the Baby as Storyteller
by Kevin Nugent
Colwyn Trevarthen
The word that Colwyn Trevarthen had died on July 2nd 2024, was greeted with a deep sense of sadness and loss by all who knew him. He was much admired and much loved. Colwyn is remembered not only for his brilliantly innovative scholarship but also for his professional generosity, his enthusiasm and his capacity to create and support scholars from many disciplines across the world. His ability to probe the inner life of the very young child and to elegantly – and often poetically - describe the imaginative vitality and communicative intimacy of very young children and their caregivers has shaped the thinking of a whole generation of developmental scholars and practitioners.
Born in New Zealand, Colwyn, was Professor (Emeritus) of Child Psychology and Psychobiology in the Department of Psychology at the University of Edinburgh, where he has taught since 1971. He initially specialized in botany, evolutionary biology, animal ethology and physiology at the Universities of Auckland and Otago. In the 1960s, he came to the United States to study at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) under Noble Prize- winning neuroscientist, Roger Sperry, who had a profound influence on his thinking. He then came to Harvard to the Center for Cognitive Studies to study young infants with Jerome Bruner.
Up to this time, behavioral scientists had severely underestimated the mental and social capacities of infants, so that Colwyn was drawn to the Center because Bruner saw infants as active in the construction and determination of their own social lives and of the lives of those around them. This is where he met Berry Brazelton. In this unique laboratory setting, under the leadership of Jerome Bruner, Trevarthen and Brazelton along with psychologists, Ed Tronick, Martin Richards, David Lee and Patricia Greenfield, used a range of innovative techniques, such as film and frame-by-frame analysis, to study the developing child and to track exactly how the expressive behaviors of caregivers and infants emerge and develop. Forsaking the conventional objective approach to the study of the child, they took the radical step of deciding to learn about babies by engaging and interacting with the babies they were studying. As Vasu Reddy pointed out, Colwyn concluded that engagement allows a richer interpretation of infant behavior than does detached observation.
In addition, Colwyn believed that classic empirical approaches to the study of non-verbal children, left intentions and emotions unexplained. Emotions are the key to psychological engagement. He went on to propose that engaging with babies in the context of a relationship is essential not only for obtaining a fuller empirical picture of infant development but also necessary for understanding ourselves. This, incidentally, contributed to Berry Brazelton’s choice to include “best performance” and “examiner facilitation” as essential elements of the administration of the Neonatal Behavioral Assessment Scale.
Perhaps Colwyn’s most powerful contribution to the field was his understanding of the origins of human intersubjectivity. We are storytelling creatures her argued and the young child is a born learner and storyteller, capable of proto-conversational exchange. The newborn baby is “born for conversation” and is actively “looking for companionship” and for engagement that can include mothers, fathers, other adults, peers and siblings – whoever offers the baby human respect. Babies have the capacity for intersubjective sympathy and are aware of other people’s thoughts and wants. As a result of this work, we now see the newborn as a “well-coordinated purposeful agent .…….deliberately communicating intentions and feelings to people from the very beginning”.
Colwyn believed that we who are privileged to work with newborns and their parents have a unique opportunity to learn from the child’s vitality, eagerness and openness to the world. Indeed, his life provides us with a moral register to guide and govern our behavior as we work with infants and their families at the most vulnerable moments of their lives. It has been said that while there have been many infant researchers but there has only been one Colwyn Trevarthen. We were privileged to have known him.
Memories of Colwyn Trevarthen
by Joanna Hawthorne
As a young psychologist, Colwyn’s work influenced my thinking about babies. He studied their interactive abilities and what goes on in their minds. My Ph.D. supervisor at University, Professor Martin Richards, met Colwyn when they both visited Jerome Bruner’s Lab at Harvard University for a year in 1968. Dr. Berry Brazelton was there too, and a lifelong friendship developed.
I first met Colwyn when he visited Martin Richards at the University around 1976/77 where I was using the NBAS in my research study. Once I became the Director of the Brazelton Centre UK in 1997, Colwyn was very happy to speak at our various Study Days and Conferences. Understanding babies’ minds was central to the work of the Brazelton Centre UK,but was not well understood by many of us. Our aim was to spread the word about the innate interactive abilities of newborn babies and their need for a responsive relationship, and Colwyn and others helped us promote this work in the UK.
Joanna Hawthorne (Director of Brazelton Centre UK), Kevin Nugent and Colwyn Trevarthen at the Brazelton Centre Conference, Cambridge, England, 2017.
I learned from Colwyn that babies look for connection and community from birth. He explained that the baby gains knowledge and understanding of others within a relationship with their parents, siblings and other caregivers. I was intrigued by his work with Steven Malloch on ‘Communicative Musicality’ and the discovery that mother-infant interactions are rhythmical and in a certain pitch, so that their proto-conversations have the same coordinated pattern that one finds in musical notation.
Colwyn’s comment that ‘Babies like people who treat them with playful respect’ makes sense to me. Colwyn told me that he learned to respect babies from Dr. Brazelton all those years ago.
Colwyn was a staunch supporter of the Brazelton Centre UK in all kinds of ways. He arranged for us to hold a joint Study Day with his colleagues, Jonathan Delafield-Butt and Dave Lee in Edinburgh. Dave headed up PMARC (Perception, Movement and Action Research Centre). We learned about their work looking at movement of preterm babies, and we presented our information about the NBAS and NBO and ways of working with parents. For several years, we held a ‘Brazelton Day’ before WAIMH Conferences. In 2014, Colwyn kindly reserved the beautiful Playfair Library, Old College, at the University of Edinburgh for our meeting. He often shared his slides, and he always shared his knowledge. Once or twice, I spoke at the same Conferences as Colwyn, and we travelled by train together. Another highlight was the Conference we held in Cambridge UK in 2007, when Colywn, Berry Brazelton, Kevin Nugent and Martin Richards spoke and enjoyed a memorable reunion.
Colwyn Trevarthen was kind, generous, humorous and an excellent teacher. Like all of us, he loved babies. I treasure the moments I spent with Colwyn.
Forthcoming Book honoring Colwyn
edited by Jonathan Delafield-Butt and Vasudevi Reddy
Jonathan Delafield-Butt and Vasudevi Reddy had hoped to surprise Colwyn by presenting him their newly edited book, “Intersubjective Minds: Rhythm, Sympathy, and Human Being”, in person, but it was not to be. The book, honouring Colwyn’s work, will be published by Oxford University Press in April 2025. Here is the book blurb:
Intersubjective Minds brings together world leaders in developmental psychology, biology, neuroscience, music, education, philosophy and psychiatry to consolidate the lifetime work of Professor Emeritus Colwyn Trevarthen, FRSE. Spanning research from the 1960s to the present, Trevarthen's contributions to science have changed our understanding of infancy, neuroscience, education and musicality. The chapters included in this book from these diverse fields describe current issues, principles and perspectives for advanced theory and working practice on the role of intersubjectivity in early human life, its contribution to health, education and learning, and therefore its role in scientific understanding of the fundamentals of the human mind. By bringing together world renowned scholars, scientists, medical and educational practitioners, this book serves as a landmark for the field of intersubjectivity.
The reference is:
Jonathan Delafield-Butt & Vasudevi Reddy (Eds.). “Intersubjective Minds: Rhythm, Sympathy, and Human Being” . Oxford: Oxford University Press (in press).