Introduction

In this issue, there is an interesting confluence of themes: infancy, infant observation, child analysis, and Proustian recollections. Most of the articles explore implicit and unexpected cross-fertilizations of the English and French traditions.

Michel Grignon's comprehensive study of the infant observation course he pioneered in Montreal with Joyce Canfield is offered here not only as a scientific contribution, but also as a pedagogical prospectus and documentary record of psychoanalytic training in Canada. The introduction by Anne Marie Gauthier helps to reframe infant observation in the context of the French intellectual tradition, which, in spite of André Green, has deeper roots in French psychoanalysis than we might expect (as Grignon himself demonstrates).

Mounir Samy's reflections on the psychoanalytic theory of symbolization in his work with a bereaved adolescent reflect the central role of object relations theory in the current model of child and adolescent psychoanalysis in Canada. The importance for Canadian psychoanalysis of Clifford's Scott's inflection of Kleinian teaching is well illustrated in this contribution.

The discovery and pursuit of affinities between the French and English (British) analytic traditions is explored with verve in Christopher Vanderwees's article on the metaphor of “skin” in the French and English traditions. His translation and introduction of a brief text by Didier Anzieu on the theme of symbolization cements the thematic interconnections in this issue between infancy, early development, the symbolic function, and cross-fertilization between French and English psychoanalysis.