ABSTRACT
This chapter looks at the way in which observation is used by a multidisciplinary team in a specialist family centre, in which the central task is assessment and treatment of families with very young children where there are serious child-protection concerns. It demonstrates the way in which the team uses observation in its work and translates the understanding gained into evidence in written reports and cross-examination in court. One of the things that have preoccupied the author in her role as child psychotherapist in the team is the discrepancy that often exists between their observations and the reports from other settings. Bick writes "The problems of ego strength, two-dimensionality, adhesive identification and second-skin formation lie very deep in the unconscious and have their origin early in the preverbal period". She goes on to suggest that patients with this kind of pathology require lengthy, painstaking containment before the underlying catastrophic anxiety will become available for scrutiny in the transference.
