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Michael Rustin has proposed that the equivalent of Pasteur's ‘laboratory’ in psychoanalytic research has traditionally been the consulting room. It has been the consulting room that contributors to the development of psychoanalytic thinking have turned for evidence of psychoanalytic phenomena. It has become accepted as ‘good science’ within the field of psychoanalysis that new ideas should be supported by clinical evidence in the form of case material. There has also been a long psychoanalytic tradition of turning to literature for further support or elucidation of some aspect of unconscious life (the poets saw it first) and, of course, it may be that a poem, novel or play first sensitizes the clinician to clinical phenomena that he or she is currently struggling with, or, that it makes suddenly transparent something that seemed previously opaque.
But it has traditionally been the consulting room where hard evidence has been found or sought, where codification and purification of procedures have been developed. I would like to propose that material from psychoanalytic infant observation, as originated by Esther Bick (1964), be considered equivalent to case material from clinical work, both in its potential for the generation of new ideas, amending current theoretical constructs and clinical technique, but also with regard to the specification and standardization of what takes place in the infant observation setting.
The setting for psychoanalytic infant observation is prescribed just as it is in clinical work: one hour on a particular day of the week is negotiated with the observed family. The requirements of the observer are also clear: the observer should not give advice, influence the family's behaviour, initiate interactions or look after the baby. The observer, like the analyst, is not responsible for what unfolds (in infant observation, the unconscious interpersonal relationships between infant and other family members) but the observer is responsible, like the