ABSTRACT
Infant observation began to be used as part of a formal curriculum in psychoanalytic psychotherapy training when introduced to the Tavistock Child Psychotherapy course by Esther Bick in 1948. It was added to the Institute of Psychoanalysis course, as an option, in the 1960s. The Anna Freud Centre also began what they call "mother–baby" observation at home in 1962, although their students had been observing in the well-baby clinic from the late 1940s. Of course, other people, not only psychoanalytic psychotherapists, had been observing babies and young children for much longer. The pain of the observation is made more acute because the observer is asked not to take any action: "The emotional proximity of the observer to the rawness of infantile anxieties, without the option of intervention, makes the task more complex". The importance of the seminar in making infant observation a meaningful experience is fully acknowledged.
