ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author examines areas of special difficulty in the beginning, middle, and last phases of the three-year observation. She looks at the following areas to illustrate some of Mrs Bick's central ideas: the child in relation to his family; the role of the observer in containing the mother/baby anxieties; the role of the tutor and seminar members in helping the observer. However, according to Mrs Bick, Baby gradually has less need of adhesive identification as a protection against anxieties regarding unintegration or disintegration and changes. Near the end of the observations, Mrs Bick had entered a nursing home and was ending her career when she completed the seminars. Despite her physical frailty and sense of impending death, with the utmost sensitive attention and love she had nourished our development through her illumination of the inner world of the baby.
