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Some approach to ‘observation’ as a method of studying socially structured organisations is common to many disciplines and has been applied with a wide range of intended outcomes. This book describes a method the editors characterize as distinctively psychoanalytic. Observers “endeavour to keep an eye on three things: the objective events happening; the emotional atmosphere; and his/her own inner experiences, the whole area of what in the psychoanalytic setting would be called the ‘countertransference’” (p. 22). Beyond this they simply watch, taking as little part in the activities of those observed as they decently can. In each observation discussed, the subjects were staff and patients in a variety of health care settings, and all the observers were themselves health care professionals, seven out of eight being psychiatrists. We are told that the observations were undertaken as a core part, but only one part, of an overall training project intended to “… enable trainees to develop their sensitivity to ward atmospheres and team morale” (p. 18), so that later they would be better able to discharge that part of their role as consultant psychotherapists which Hinshelwood defines as “offering understanding of the state of the psychiatric institution in which they work” (p. 19).
There is a short preface in the form of a dialogue between the two editors discussing how they came to be involved in this work, followed by two jointly authored chapters, the first outlining some of the theoretical and historical background to the study of institutional dynamics and the second describing the actual method of observing adopted in the studies here presented. Next come eight papers by eight different authors, each describing their own particular observation project (five in mental health care settings, three in general health care), each of which seem to have been their first (and, so far as we can tell,