ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the importance of infant observation in psychoanalytic training for a number of reasons. It aims to help students conceive vividly the infantile experience of their child patients, to increase their understanding of a child's nonverbal behaviour, to help understand a child's history better when they interview the mother. The chapter provides a unique opportunity to observe infant development from birth, and compares observations with other students. It focuses on what the observer learned to see in the infant. Infant observation had, in fact, been part of the training course for child psychotherapists at the Tavistock Clinic since 1948 when the course began. Infant observation was introduced into the curriculum of the Institute of Psycho-Analysis in London in 1960 as part of the course for first year students. The intervening period had also seen in the British Psychoanalytical Society an extraordinary confluence of interest in the mother–infant relationship and developments stemming from this.
