‘Infant Observation and Developmental Psychology’,

The editorial sets out this issue’s topic of dialogue, which historically has been difficult, between child psychotherapists and infant observers who have found developmental psychology useful and influential in their clinical work, and developmental and social psychologists who have found psychoanalytic thinking valuable in opening doors to new research methods and the development of new theories. It asks what kind of child development research could be most useful to psychoanalytic practitioners today? In this special issue, the selection was guided around three main themes: developments in research that have involved researchers using psychoanalytic thinking to break out of traditional rationalistic or linear ways of conceiving development or the meaning of human behaviour; developments in child psychotherapy that have depended on integrating developmental psychology findings into work with new or hard to reach clinical populations, as in work with autistic and traumatised children, or in the growing field of parent-infant psychotherapy; and a recognition of the need to find appropriate methods for evaluating psychoanalytically-informed clinical interventions.