ABSTRACT
In this chapter, starting from the idea of the relationship between maternal and paternal functions in the processing of experience, I take as the object of my thinking an account of a particular observation and its discussion in an observation seminar group. Using the example of early splitting and projective identification, first delineated in terms of Klein’s (1946) seminal paper, ‘Notes on some schizoid mechanisms’, I reflect on this process in the observation, the group and in the mind of the teacher. The seminar leader is also involved, I suggest, in an ongoing process. She needs to exercise caution in the fine balancing of her own maternal containing and paternal explicating processes, in order to facilitate rather than foreclose on the learning that can take place in the experiential group setting. I go on to exemplify this in a particular narrative of teaching and learning that occurred within a single seminar, halfway through the first year of the students’ experience.
