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At a conference in London in 2000, André Green and Daniel Stern engaged in a daylong metatheoretical debate about the role or relevance of research-based models of the infant mind and its development in the clinical work of psychoanalysis. Stern advocated the utility of infant research, highlighting, for example, the way research on the relatedness of newborns challenges Freud's conceptualization of primary narcissism. Green countered that “the reality of intrapsychic life makes any form of observational study impossible or at least impossibly naive” (Denman 2001, p. 550). By employing Freud's concept of Nachträglichkeit, deferred action, he argued, “any notion of the ‘now’ as relevant to psychoanalysis is instantly destroyed, corroded if you like, by our post hoc reconstructions” (p. 550).
The panel “Is Infant Research Useful in Clinical Work with Adults?” departed from this highly theoretical debate to home in on clinical concerns. Chair Anne Erreich focused on “whether infant research provides novel conceptualizations for the relationship between two minds in the motherinfant dyad which may then be reenacted in the transference relationships.” The concern here was a pragmatic one: does infant research further our understanding of transference in any meaningful way? In addressing this question, Erreich invited two speakers to represent contrasting positions on the subject: Nasir Ilahi, an analyst with a British object relations and post-Kleinian perspective, and Doris Silverman, an analyst who relies on systematic infant research, when it is appropriately available, to inform her work. These two speakers presented their theoretical positions, using clinical case material to illustrate their approach. The Italian analyst Jorge Canestri, European editor of the International Journal of Psychoanalysis and chair of the Working Party on Theoretical Issues of the European Psychoanalytic Federation, offered a discussion that drew out several points warranting further consi