My experience in the Infant Observation seminar exposed me from an early stage of my psychoanalytic training to what I will designate here as the experience of misunderstanding: first, misunderstanding at an individual level, in my struggle to understand my mandate as observer; second, misunderstanding at the group level when sharing my observational notes with the analytic group. I will briefly elaborate on these two levels of misunderstanding and will discuss the value of this experience of misunderstanding in my analytic practice and the development of my mind as an “analyst.”

Just to give you the context in which the observation took place, I was a new immigrant in Canada, and I had just become a father for the first time.