First a word on the task: to provide a commentary on a baby observation that represents a particular view and mode of practice. In baby observations the student is encouraged to generate questions about what might be going on for the parent/child couple in inter and intra psychic terms. It is this process of allowing oneself to wonder, speculate and frame questions which is as important as coming up with a particular explanatory schema. What follows therefore is probably not what an Anna Freudian point of view would be (if indeed there is such a homogenous view) but rather the questions that arose in this reader's mind.

In the ‘Background to observation’ section the observer gives 'a vivid sense of the creative chaos in which the family live. On the one hand the observer is assailed by