ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the slow evolution of a way of working. It is a way of working that was at first highly clinical, fairly unsystematic, and yet extraordinarily stimulating. The chapter also describes the physical setting of our research, in particular in relation to the opportunities it presents for observation of phenomena relevant to the separation-individuation process, but also including some historical perspectives on the evolution of various aspects of the design. The method of procedure has, for the most part, relied upon a descriptive, clinical approach with observations of mother-child pairs occurring in an essentially naturalistic setting. The participant observer was as passive as the situation permitted, yet assisted the toddlers in their play, attended to their needs, and functioned as go-between for the toddler and his mother. The toddler room was discovered by most infants already in their expansive early practicing subphase, their crawling period.
