Elisabeth Fivaz

Teaches at the University of Lausanne, where she is co-director of the Center for Family Studies. She is the author of the book “The primary triangle” which revolutionized our knowledge on the first forms of child-adult interaction, classically centered on the exclusive study of the mother-child relationship.

Carmine Saccu: She was a great friend of Stern and influenced him, discoloring some of her systemic thinking on him. She filmed the interaction between the child and the parental couple and started proposing the triangle as a way of researching on psychotherapy: to see how the relationship between the people in the therapy room change in terms of closeness and distance. She inspired me to realize how active children are in influencing their parents.