ABSTRACT
There are some issues that it is important to address before looking closely at these areas. Students interviewed before they had had much experience of carrying out observations had little or no “real” experience to talk about. Apart from the Institute group, who referred to their previous observation experience—for some as long as 10 years earlier—they could only talk about what they anticipated, what they had been told in seminars or had read or imagined. The rather glib quality and lack of emotionality of the early interviews could be understood as inevitable without the lived experience in which to root ideas. However, we could also argue that the infant observation experience enables participants to be more in touch with their emotional experiences.
