ABSTRACT
Three vignettes are described from an infant observation during which an infant with visible differences experienced episodes of physical trauma. The observation allowed for exploration of the observer’s capacity to contain painful experience, illustrating intense states of mind, which may arise during an observation as the observer tries to “think about” their mind to understand the infant. This chapter conveys how powerful infant feelings and demands can be, which all therapists are implicitly asked to contain, in children or adults, and in themselves. It was a painful observation different from others described here in that this infant experienced episodes of physical trauma leading to increased emotional distress within a relationship. In giving a picture of the active internal work of reflecting that observers carry out, it conveys the pain that infants and their observers can feel. The observer’s countertransference experience sometimes felt to be “psychotic”, and the ways in which this later became possible to understand in the context of events that impacted on mother and baby are described, providing examples of seemingly “wild” thoughts that later turned out to be intensely meaningful intuitions. The mother had two children including the one being observed who had considerable disabilities, and there was depression, shame, anger, and guilt about that. There was uncertainty about what was happening when there seemed to be abuse and the conflict of feelings stirred up in the observer. Some of the abuse may have been related to a difficulty in the parents being able to process and accept the infant’s depression for which there seemed evidence in the material. This may link with the neglect that may occasionally emerge in families with disabled children where the physical care seems good (Hingley-Jones, 2011).
