The 2006 Congress in Paris featured two new formats: master classes and interface debate plenary sessions. These new formats were designed to enhance the focus on clinical treatment and prevention aspects of infant mental health. Thus, the master classes focused on specialized themes of clinical interest to participants. Likewise, the interface plenary debates brought together experts with different orientations to study clinical cases presented on video and to compare their divergent assessments. In addition, the cases for the interface debates were selected to prolong and illustrate the themes treated in the traditional plenary sessions, enhancing the coherence of each day's program. These innovations were well received by the participants.
The conference was masterfully introduced by Daniel Stern's keynote on the clinical relevance of infancy: a progress report. After noting changes in emphasis during the past decade (e.g., movement from an emphasis on intrapsychic to an emphasis on interpersonal, the reappraisal of early interventions stimulated by results from evidence-based, home-visiting programs, and the emphasis on implicit knowledge and intersubjectivity), Stern turned to the areas of great promise for the future: disentangling attachment from love and holding, progress on regulation of mirror neurons, progress on the articulation between the implicit and the explicit, nonspecific functions in psychotherapy, and finally, exploring further the family interactions beyond the dyad.
Day 1 focused on the transition to parenthood in the family unit. It was introduced by Elisabeth Fivaz-Depeursinge, who showed evidence on the early infant's triangular capacity-the infant's communication with both parents at the same time. Then she illustrated its development through clinical cases, showing the differences in the development of triangular communication