Editorial

Abstract

When Esther Bick came up with her brainwave; the practice of naturalistic psychoanalytic baby observation, she could never have expected it to spread so far, nor that its applications would become so many and so useful. This issue of the Journal, the first of 2019, contains examples of applications of Bick’s method of exceptional quality. These are descriptions and illustrations which give a clear sense of what can be understood and learnt in terms of how to use observation to assess the needs of children who have had to be removed from their birth parents, white South African children cared for by white-employed black nannies, observing oneself developing and learning as a new observation teacher, and using observation to understand the complex dynamics of treating young people with diabetes and transferring to adult medical care. Bick (1964) originally conceived of the idea that trainee child psychotherapists, and later psychoanalysts in training (Infant Observation at the Tavistock began in 1948 and, at the Institute of Psychoanalysis in 1960) would benefit from the direct experience of establishing and undertaking a regular weekly visit to observe a baby in his or her family. The explicit aim was to encourage the observer to establish the observation in negotiation with the baby’s parents, and to try, as far as possible, ‘simply’ to notice as much as possible about the baby, quietly taking in and remembering the detail of what happened in the hour. Bick wanted future child psychotherapists to have some direct experience of being with a baby. She wanted to alert them to something which came entirely naturally to Bick herself, to be in touch with the infantile in child patients and to listen sympathetically and with greater imaginative and sympathetic involvement, to mothers’ accounts of their baby (See Rustin, 2009). The observer was to try to find a place in the family home and to note whatever happened in the ordinary course of events, to be recalled by writing as detailed an account as possible soon after the observation finished. This apparently simple task was, in fact, not simple at all, as Bick knew and as Rustin (2009) amongst many others, has noted. The observer’s task of finding an appropriate position during observational visits is often excruciating. The self-consciousness, any feeling of being looked at critically which parents might have, the observer’s strong identification with the baby, the raw feeling of new-ness, all contribute. Bick was strongly aware of observers’ tendency to identify with the baby, and to feel critical of parents. She was also aware that, again as Rustin notes, (Rustin 2009) the observer needs to find a way to relate to everyone who is present, focusing on the baby without ‘acting out a role’ offered unconsciously or consciously by the family. The observer is inevitably also exposed to the emotional upheaval of the first months of life. The formal application of observation to a range of tasks and settings began with Martha Harris’s Work Discussion Seminars at the Tavistock. My own first experience of work discussion was as a secondary school teacher when I was helped to understand what was going on in my pastoral work with troubled adolescents. I was helped, along with fellow students from a variety of settings, to develop what is sometimes known as an ‘observational stance’ in my interactions with the young people. Taking