Infancy
Infant observation contributes to understanding the richness of infants' relationships, particularly within the family. However, our ability to gain access to infants' experience may be subtly affected by our interpretation of context and the adults' behaviour, especially their language. What kind of interaction is possible between preverbal infants without adults present and how can we understand what is going on between them... more
This is a revised edition of the Collected papers of Martha Harris and Esther Bick, published in 1987 by the Clunie Press, also edited by Meg Harris Williams. It benefits from a new foreword by Harris Williams, and three Appendices: an appreciation by Donald Meltzer on Martha Harris’s contribution to the Tavistock Course written after her death in 1987, an account of the experience of being in an infant observation seminar with Mrs Bick, and... more
Setting her critique briefly in the context of traditions of infant research that tend to bypass emotions in accounts of infant cognition and development, resulting in a pervasive split in psychology between emotion and thinking, Urwin introduces psychoanalytic accounts of infancy, especially Melanie Klein and Wilfred Bion, which takes a distinctive approach to the relation between emotion and thought. She aims to demonstrate the... more
This article explores what it means to know a person as distinct from the self. It uses examples of interactions between pairs of same-aged babies. I hope to illustrate the relevance of psychoanalytic concepts, focusing particularly on defences against anxiety, primitive phantasy and the account of the depressive position put forward by Melanie Klein. This refers to a phase rather than a stage development, or a reorientation in mental life... more
Cathy Urwin reports on discussion in small groups following Ann Alvarez and Edna O’Shaughnessy’s papers on unintegration, disintergration and integration. Questions were raised about what is being ‘integrated’ in the infant. Of many topics covered, the greatest attention was given to the implications of the emphasis on the mother as a psychological object raised by O'Shaugnessy, an emphasis also implicit in other papers, and the impact... more
