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THE CONCERN in this chapter is with the theories about development that operate in the therapist's mind and that therefore influence the creation of the reconstructed “clinical infant.” These theories will be examined in the light of new knowledge about the “observed infant” and the development of the different domains of sense of self.
It is important to recall that an assessment of clinical theory from the perspective of direct infant observation says nothing about the validity of clinical theories as therapeutic constructs. Nor can it say much about the same theories as they apply to children past infancy, when symbolic functions are more in place. (We have suggested before that psychoanalytic developmental theory may make a better fit with direct observations during childhood than with observations during infancy.) What such an assessment can do is to measure and describe the distance between the two views, so that the tension between the two, when clarified can operate as a corrective to both.
Knowledge of the observed infant seems to have the greatest