Infant Observational Research and Psychoanalysis

Let me start with a comment on Baudry's remarks on research method, specifically his asking, “Does the protocol state what the researcher purports to study?” I find that, although prediction is a powerful validation parameter in research, serendipitous-adventitious findings can under certain conditions validate facts with equal power. That one finds something one did not anticipate may in fact suffer less from the subjective bias that goes into data evaluation of predicted hypotheses. I am not as convinced as some researchers about the merits of existing guidelines and standards for what is meritorious research. For example, in the course of one research project, we believed two unexpected findings to be much more compelling than those we predicted and sought to document. So much so, that these findings led me to commit the past twenty-five years to work in these two areas: (1) Finding infant behaviors to run counter, to reject existing theory, I have now long explored the nature and development of aggression, its contributions to psychic life, to conflict and adaptation; and (2) finding dramatic evidence of growth-disturbing handling of children by their own parents, we have been studying the domain of parenting, its growth-promoting and growth-disturbing characteristics, and its optimization.

Here, I am very tempted to now address anew the question of the relevance of infant observational research for the clinical situation. I have stated my conviction of its relevance not only for the clinical situation but for psychoanalytic theory and psychoanalysis in general in a commentary on the fine book edited by Scott Dowling and Chuck Rothstein on the subject (Parens, 1994). Furthermore, there is John