You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
One can fall in love with a method. Potters, dancers, monks and mapmakers – all manner of makers and learners strive to acquire the means to explore the part of the
universe that draws them. Sometimes, the very method of exploration becomes, in itself, an object of beauty, as it is being practised and applied. Falling in love with a method means experiencing a relationship between discipline and discovery; finding something quite new through one’s own use of means tried and tested before by others and discovering that this allows an encounter with the object of interest in a way that would otherwise be inaccessible. For love to grow, the method must be structured without being rigid. The theory behind the method (and there is always theory behind a method) must serve the object of study, rather than reify it, illuminate rather than designate. In this collection of papers, edited by Simonetta Adamo and Margaret Rustin, we are invited to share in the beauty, vigour and intellectual rigour of the method of Young Child Observation as it is taught at the Tavistock Clinic. Clearly, the contributors to this volume love the method and through it convey the spirit of poet Mary Oliver’s (1992) ‘Instructions for living a life’:
Pay attention.
Be astonished.
Tell about it.
In telling about it, the editors have usefully organised the book into five parts of three or four papers each, with an informative introduction and epilogue that provide historical background and intellectual context for the work of the contributors. Each part can be read separately and in any order, depending on the nature of the reader’s interest.
Part I covers Developmental Issues, focusing on separation, transitions and Oedipal anxieties. Part II offers papers based on observations in the home, bringing to life the child’s growing understanding of the complexities of family life. Part III, Observations in a nursery, shows the profound impact that the culture of the nursery has on the child’s inner world. P