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In the past seven years, the Child Study Centre, Yale University School of Medicine has attempted systematic predictions concerning the development of mother-child relationships and of critical areas in child development on the basis of prolonged observation which was initiated with the mother's pregnancy. It is held that prediction helps to expose areas where knowledge is scanty, and where it is adequate and reliable, and enforces re-evaluation of data and of assumptions as to what is relevant. The study also includes progressive analysis of the process of prediction. 'We try to focus on specific problems: What kind of predictions are being suggested by any given material; at what point are these predictions expanded; when do new areas of prediction suggest themselves; when are general predictions replaced by more specific ones; what predictions could have been made in the past had we properly evaluated clues. What can be predicted at any given time, that is the range of prediction, is to us more significant than the correctness or incorrectness of any specific prediction' (Kris 1957).
The present paper is an attempt to evaluate the process of prediction and highlight some of its problems. Predictions as to areas of future conflict have been based for instance on the assumption that the maternal defences would be of paramount influence whereas in fact the operative influence proved to be a break-through of the original impulses defended against. The early recognition of non-pathological aspects of behaviour in both mother and child and the assessment of their influence presented difficulty. 'We have been more accurate in predicting areas of conflict … than we have been in predicting conflict-free functioning and the use of normal defenses.' The positive effects which the baby's maturation would have on the mother's adverse attitudes and the effect of the influences of the team on both mother and child are difficult to forecast. The nature and intensity of