Current preoccupations in infant observation

Abstract

In this issue, Margaret Rustin’s paper, ‘Where are we now? Reflections on infant observation then and now’ (Rustin, 2022), reviews developments since the midto late 1960s when she herself began her training. She begins, naturally, with the fact that Esther Bick began infant observation, for child psychotherapy trainees at the Tavistock Clinic, 74 years ago in 1948 (interestingly the same year that the British National Health Service began). At the present time, in 2022, I have in mind two major themes in terms of developments in infant observation. One of them still predominates in articles submitted to Infant Observation; the impact of the Covid pandemic and the lockdowns which were imposed from early 2020 until 2021. The other theme, which I hope, over time, will be discussed in submissions to the journal, is the inclusion of thinking about diversity and difference in infant observation. This subject will be the theme of an international conference for infant and other observation teachers at the Tavistock Clinic in the summer of 2023. The impact of the pandemic and the periods of lockdown continue to appear in various ways in accounts of infant observations which took place during the past two years. Some began ‘in person’ and moved to online, using video, while other started online. One account of two observations published in our last issue described the observations of Iva Ajder and Lumley (2021) which had been fascinating ‘in person’ observations of two interesting babies and their mothers, but which had to finish after a few months online – a painful struggle for both the observers and the families and babies. Maria Pozzi Monzo, in this edition, offers an extremely interesting account of ‘making the best of a bad job’, in her article about continuing parent infant psychotherapy online during the lockdown in the UK. Her detailed clinical material and candid comments bring to life the difficulties of trying to work clinically with mothers and their small children on screen, and the worthwhile perseverance which she brought in offering sessions over longer time periods of time in order to be effective. All the cases which she reports demonstrate how important it was to be clinically flexible in such difficult times. An news article, which is an account from two infant observation teachers from Russia, Tayana Alexandrova andOlga Papsueva, published in this issue describes their struggles to keep something valued and valuable going during the pandemic in their country. Their account also draws our attention to a few glimpses of cultural difference. It seems that some observations are set up entirely by telephone before the observation itself begins. This is certainly unusual in the UK tradition. The article also provides glimpses of such characteristics of Russian family life such as the way the observer is greeted on arrival at the family’s apartment, which to western European eyes appears extremely formal. The authors state that Russian families are generally receptive to the ideaofweekly observation. It would be very interesting to understand more about the positive responses. The article also describes the way observed Russian families responded to the lockdown of the pandemic. There is a stark contrast in the authors’ minds between in-person contact and video linking; the video link seems, in their minds to be almost unbearable and, in the