Researching affective processes: potential contribution of psychoanalytic infant observation methodology.

In the first part of the workshop I will talk about the history and nature of infant observation. It was initially introduced into the newly emergent training for child psychotherapists set up at the Tavistock Centre in the late nineteen forties by a Kleinian psychoanalyst called Esther Bick. During the war years the so-called Controversial Discussions had divided the British Psychoanalytic Society. A crucial issue had been what kinds of claims could be made about the mental life of infants and preverbal children. It was thought that direct observation of babies’ development could make theoretical debates better informed. Bick also thought that studying infants’ development in their own homes would give trainees invaluable experience of the social realities of family life and of the rawness of babies’ emotional lives and its impact on those around them. Developing the capacity to observe and stay with the impact of the baby’s experience might also be valuable in learning to deal with the emotional experience and states of mind of vulnerable patients later on.

Secondly, we will look at excerpts of observational material; from an observation of a mother and baby from an ethnic minority group, which may illustrate the impact of cultural difference on the observer, and an observation of a mother and baby who have been through a traumatic birth experience, and which may have the effect of generating very strong feelings in readers even though the mother is apparently unaware of these feelings herself.

Thirdly, I will give some examples of research studies in which infant observation methods have been used to understand more about the subjective experience and social realities of vulnerable individuals/ groups in challenging contexts, and how these interface with social or institutional dynamics.