Introduction: Infants in Hospital

These papers were originally presented at a scientific meeting of the Association of Child Psychotherapists, which included contributions from Dr. N. Lisman and Mrs. A. Fletcher.

It bas been said that Psycho-analysis discovered the child within the adult, and that child-analysis discovered the baby within the child. With the psychoanalytic study of Infant Observation the wheel began to turn full circle as the “little adult” within the baby came more clearly into view.*

This awareness of the continuities in the meaning of relationships from the beginning of life forms the basis of some work which has been carried out by a number of psychoanalysts and child psychotherapists in Infant Intensive Care Units and other wards. Although they have focussed in turn on the parents, on the babies, the staff, and the ward atmosphere as a whole, observations of mothers and babies have formed the core and common starting point.

In this context it is interesting to note that the last two decades or so have seen considerable developments within the fields of medicine and experimental psychology, which have become more subtle, as well as more sophisticated, in their studies of infant behaviour. A major common theme which has emerged might be summed up by a quotation from Newson, writing in 1977, that in contrast to their physical immaturity, infants are “in a sense highly precocious socially”. There is now “hard evidence” that from the very beginning, babies take an interest in people before objects, interacting and communicating in a social way, and that their senses enable them to distinguish mother's smell, voice, and face within the first days and weeks. This is welcome confirmation for the kind of findings which have been made by the more specifically psycho-analytic techniques of combining attentiveness to detail and sequence with receptivity and empathy, in order to follow the patterns of meaning and relationships which can be seen to emerge.

Working inside a ward in a hospital one