Psychoanalytic infant observation

It has since become an essential feature of pre-clinical training in child and adult psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and related fields throughout the Western world.

This naturalistic form of experiential enquiry provides a unique opportunity to sharpen and extend the observational skills of future therapists.

In 1948, she began teaching at the Tavistock Clinic and in collaboration with John Bowlby she started the practice of observation as an integral part of psychotherapy training.

She emphasized the gathering of data over time, the need to wait for meaning to emerge, and the observer's responsibility to respect their role as learner and to behave with tact and reliability.

[8] Bick's ideas took shape at the same time as Wilfred Bion’s work on ‘A theory of thinking’ and these two explorations of the emotional and cognitive dimensions of the early mother-child relationship are profoundly complementary.

[9] Over the last fifty years courses for professionals working with children and families have made increasing use of infant and child observation as a central aspect of training.

It has proved invaluable in increasing professional skills and in sensitising workers to the range of anxieties, difficulties and creative possibilities in each family.

[11] The model, in which infant observation continues to play a pre-eminent role, has been adopted with modifications across the UK and internationally: for example, GERPEN in France and at the Martha Harris Study Centres in Italy.

The post-graduate programme known as Psychoanalytic Observational Studies which is run under the auspices of the Tavistock Clinic is currently delivered in the UK in Belfast, Birmingham, Bristol, Devon, Oxford and Liverpool and in Italy, in Florence, Genoa and Milan.

Some courses and trainings, including those at the Tavistock Clinic, The Birmingham Trust for Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy and the Northern School of Child and Adolescent Psychotherapy also offer the chance to undertake an observation of a pre-school child (approximately two to four years old) in their family or in a nursery setting for an hour a week for one academic year.