ABSTRACT
This chapter presents an overview of the key concepts discussed in the subsequent chapters of this book. It presents an empirical research, in which author interviewed participants who were engaged in carrying out infant observation in major London psychoanalytic or psychoanalytic psychotherapy training institutions. The book outlines the methodology, showing how the research was conducted and gives some attention to the theoretical principles that underlay the approach that author took to analysing the data. It approaches the data, showing that it was possible to generate the categories using the grounded theory method. The book looks at the mind of the clinician at work and discusses whether, through looking closely at excerpts from the interviews, people can see similar capacities operating in the mind of the observer. It gives a flavour of what complex thinking and feeling is going on within the observer.
