ABSTRACT
J. Bowlby writes about his observation of young children: "They show with unmistakable clarity how early in life certain characteristic patterns of social behaviour—some hopeful, others ominous—become established". In considering the issues facing the various children from both psychoanalytic perspective and in terms of their movement profiles, it was clear that characteristic movement qualities reflected the mental and emotional states of the various children. This chapter identifies some of the issues that created an anxious atmosphere within the group of children, who were not, in any obvious sense, deprived or threatened; but who were all faced with negotiating the delicate transition between fusion and separation. Their behaviour in the nursery betrayed internal feelings of anxiety that coloured their states of mind and body, feelings which, in all likelihood, had their roots in preverbal life experience.
