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Psychoanalysis and history are inextricably bound. No-one practising the former can do so without a fine respect for the latter and a firm belief in the influence it exerts on the here and now. So it is both pleasurable and salutary to be firmly reminded from time to time of one's professional links with the past and of its relevance to ongoing work.
For past Hampstead graduates this book will be a rewarding encounter with the familiar, akin to re-reading a ‘family history’ that awakens innumerable personal memories. For the general reader it will provide insights into some aspects of developmental work with children at the Centre which have become central to our thinking. How, for instance, the baby observations of today began in Vienna in the 1920s with Charlotte Bühler who constructed developmental profiles of babies from observational studies in which she was helped by, and trained, both Use Hellman and Esther Bick. And how, later, in the War Nurseries, under the guidance of Anna Freud, longitudinal observations were collected and ‘pooled’, founding the data bank of observational material which was systematized and later led to the Hampstead Index, an important research tool and one of the cornerstones of the training.
But this book is much more than the sum of its parts. The papers were previously published over a long period of time. Collating them in this one volume has, I think, highlighted the extent of Use Hellman's contributions to child analysis. Two of these contributions are of major importance. The first is her commitment to longitudinal observation which has led to some quite unique follow-up studies of children who were observed in the War Nurseries and who then maintained contact with Use into adulthood or alternatively were taken into analysis. I believe two of them are celebrating their 50th birthday this year. The second is her interest in the parent-child relationship and the effect of parental pathology on the child's psychic health. It is an in