ABSTRACT
Esther Bick developed the direct observation of the mother–baby couple as an aid to learning for trainees in child psychotherapy. This method soon produced research results, but Bick's primary aim was to accustom trainee child psychotherapists to the behaviour and inferred experience of the infant. Though the psychiatric trainees were bright, they were stuck in a culture that induced in them a scientific attitude to their work and to the objects of their study, the patients. Menzies' study relied on the psychoanalytic model of anxiety and defence. This, too, is fundamental to Bick's observational method, which also rests on the basic psychoanalytic proposition of anxiety and defence. Thus, author's method involved attending to the behavioural practices of staff, just as Menzies had observed and recorded the defensive practices of the nursing service. By inference, she then related such practices to individual defences in each nurse, defences that are supported by the social system of attitudes and values.
