ABSTRACT
This chapter talks about the research project contain both empirical research and what is described by Dreher as "conceptual research": "Conceptual investigations in psychoanalysis are just as important as are the various forms of empirical research". In order to test the relevance of infant observation to the training of psychoanalytic psychotherapists, it was necessary to examine what it is believed it contributes, and whether it does what it is held to do. The research was undertaken in a naturalistic setting, using descriptive methods, a form well established in the social sciences. The use of groups can be considered as equivalent to the single case study — a view accepted by Kratochwill, Mott, and Dodson and by Kazdin. The research was designed to establish whether something substantive, relating to the assumed contribution of infant observation to psychotherapy training, actually happens in this learning process.
