Commentary by an Analytical Psychologist

In early 1989 the Association of Child Psychotherapists held a conference called ‘Ways of Seeing’. A video of a baby observation was shown and four speakers were invited to talk about what they saw in the light of their theoretical orientation. The conference was an inquiry into how our theoretical preconceptions inform our observations and, consequently, our clinical practice.

At the conference there seemed to be general agreement about the purpose of baby observation. It is seen as an opportunity to experience through observation the development of a baby in its relationship with its mother and family. Recording the observation, far from attempting to be ‘objective’, is thoroughly informed by empathy and counter-transference. This experience establishes the basis of our understanding of the early development of our patients, and is different from the reconstructed infancy of adults and children in psychotherapy. Equally important, baby observation helps develop skills as an observer, one who offers sympathetic interest while not being active in the situation. The capacity to contain and bear the many intense feelings aroused by the intimate scenes between mother and baby without acting is very important in a budding psychotherapist.

Taking part in a similar though smaller exercise for the British Journal of Psychotherapy, I should like to turn first to the baby observation and then look at the model of the self and its dynamics that has been evolved by Michael Fordham. In this observation, the central experience is the distress of the baby, the corresponding