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The retrospective reconstructive stance of Freud led naturally to the wish to explore infancy and childhood prospectively. Among the pioneering efforts in this area were those of the Yale group (Kris, E., 1957), Margaret Fries (1977), and most prominently Margaret Mahler (Mahler, Pine, and Bergman, 1975). We should look at these programs and at those of nonanalytic investigators in order to determine what they were looking for and what they have achieved. In order to do this in the space allotted I will take large leaps and do no one justice, but the exercise will, I hope, let us in on the problems inherent in the task.
From our vantage point as analysts any study must ask what do we wish to know, what methods are available to find the answers, and what are the pitfalls and limits of the methods to be used. A story is told of an ichthyologist who sought to learn about the creatures in the sea. He cast a net and laid his catch on the dock, and concluded that the sea had creatures one inch and above. Of course, his net had a one-inch mesh. The latter story alerts us to the caution that we should never expect more from any study than the method of observation can yield. I will now catalogue some of the methods used and suggest some of the errors in expectation that I can see, and then proceed to a possible programmatic statement about how future forays might be organized.
Anna Freud (1965) articulated the problem most accurately when she offered that analysts do not study events but the repercussion of events on the mind. Nonetheless analysts have, from the beginning, shown the hubris to become developmental counsellors based on their understanding of the retrospective child within. I believe we have been too ready to believe in our retrospective baby as an observable baby. On the other hand no discipline has influenced infant