Current preoccupations in infant observation

In this issue, Margaret Rustin’s paper, ‘Where are we now? Reflections on infant observation then and now’ (Rustin, 2022), reviews developments since the mid- to late 1960s when she herself began her training. She begins, naturally, with the fact that Esther Bick began infant observation, for child psychotherapy trainees at the Tavistock Clinic, 74 years ago in 1948 (interestingly the same year that the British National Health Service began).

At the present time, in 2022, I have in mind two major themes in terms of developments in infant observation. One of them still predominates in articles submitted to Infant Observation; the impact of the Covid pandemic and the lockdowns which were imposed from early 2020 until 2021. The other theme, which I hope, over time, will be discussed in submissions to the journal, is the inclusion of thinking about diversity and difference in infant observation. This subject will be the theme of an international conference for infant and other observation teachers at the Tavistock Clinic in the summer of 2023.

The impact of the pandemic and the periods of lockdown continue to appear in various ways in accounts of infant observations which took place during the past two years. Some began ‘in person’ and moved to online, using video, while other started online. One account of two observations published in our last issue described the observations of Iva Ajder and Lumley (2021) which had been fascinating ‘in person’ observations of two interesting babies and their mothers, but which had to finish after a few months online – a painful struggle for both the observers and the families and babies. Maria Pozzi Monzo, in this edition, offers an extremely interesting account of ‘making the best of a bad job’, in her article about continuing parent infant psychotherapy online during the lockdown in the UK. Her detailed clinical material and candid comments bring to life the difficulties of trying to work clinically with mothers and their small children on screen, and the worthwhile perseverance which she brought in offering sessions over longer time periods of time in order to be effective. All the cases which she reports demonstrate how important it was to be clinically flexible in such difficult times.

An news article, which is an account from two infant observation teachers from Russia, Tayana Alexandrova and Olga Papsueva, published in this issue describes their struggles to keep something valued and valuable going during the pandemic in their country. Their account also draws our attention to a few glimpses of cultural difference. It seems that some observations are set up entirely by telephone before the observation itself begins. This is certainly unusual in the UK tradition. The article also provides glimpses of such characteristics of Russian family life such as the way the observer is greeted on arrival at the family’s apartment, which to western European eyes appears extremely formal. The authors state that Russian families are generally receptive to the idea of weekly observation. It would be very interesting to understand more about the positive responses. The article also describes the way observed Russian families responded to the lockdown of the pandemic. There is a stark contrast in the authors’ minds between in-person contact and video linking; the video link seems, in their minds to be almost unbearable and, in the examples they cite, did not last very long. Families living in cramped or crowded flats were particularly affected. Two observations are described, and, in both cases, the online arrangement did not last longer than six weeks before the observers returned to visiting their families to observe again in person. In person, social contact with the observer seemed to be highly valued, whereas and the on-screen link did not seem to be experienced as a good substitute in the circumstances. It seemed to be experienced as barely tolerable.

It is interesting to compare online observation experiences from different countries. The accounts of infant observation from northern Italy during the early part of their lockdown in 2020 (di Pasquale et al., 2020; Gatti, 2021) and from Iran, South America (Cardenal & Magagna, 2020) and from the UK (Ajder & Lumley, 2021) all describe longer periods of online video-observation than the Russian account. Readers can pick up the flavour of how the baby and the family were managing lockdown and, in the observation online, the articles describe interesting ways in which the babies and toddlers related to the camera. Some tried to get their fingers or hands inside it, perhaps to look for the observer, while others took to wearing sunglasses, for example.

There have also been incidents where the babies or toddlers have disappeared from the line of site of the tablet or laptop camera, knowing very well that they were moving out of the observer’s sight, while other children have certainly grabbed hold of devices and turned them upside down or at particular angles, changing what the observer could or could not see. Small children have also put phones or tablets on the floor, screen down, ‘blinding’ the observer. It seemed obvious in the South American observation that the children were angry not to have the observer’s physical presence and that their mother really missed the companionship of having the observer with her. In her isolation, she clearly felt competitive with the baby and her older daughter for the observer’s attention. In the Iranian article, the authors (Daghighi et al., 2020) discovered something which surprised them; several mothers complained about having to take on the role of ‘cameraperson’. They had not felt that they could position the mobile phone somewhere which would take in most of the scene, out of reach of the baby or their older children. They felt tied to the camera, complaining that, before the lockdown, they were able to get on with housework while the observer was in the house.

Of course, there have always been fascinating accounts of baby and toddler interest in screens in live observations. When the TV is on a lot of the time, observers have watched toddlers relating to the images they see on screen, sometimes going behind the television to look for the characters they see, and whom they imagine to be inside it. We have yet to see what might be the impact on the development of ‘lockdown’ babies and toddlers because so much of their early contact with grandparents, extended family and family friends going on on-screen rather than in person. We are already hearing that more children going into nursery in the UK are struggling with ‘real life’ social relationships than was the case before the pandemic.

Other articles in this issue include a psychoanalytic perspective of the work of Tove Jansson by Agne Raneberg. There is also a fascinating infant observation by a couple of psychotherapist, Robert Monzo, which looks to the observation of a resilient baby and the highly important role of father in helping an unresponsive mother to become more connected to her baby.

Diversity and difference in infant observation

Differences between observers and observed family in terms of race, socio-economic circumstances, culture or sexuality have gained prominence in the UK in recent times. The challenges are many-faceted. The concern about increasing the diversity of the student population is not new and there have been significant changes in the last decade or so. Recent socio-political developments in the UK, USA and many other countries have drawn attention to the question of the ways in which we have traditionally found families who might consider accepting an observer to come into their home every week. Our traditional methods have been shown to be rather narrow and restrictive. The unintended consequence has been that the range of observed families has, perhaps, been rather narrow and there is now a strong commitment to widening it. This is a welcome development which requires us all to challenge ourselves in terms of previously held assumptions. In the generation of observers in the mid-1970s, for example, the idea of an ‘ordinary family’ was automatically one where the parental couple was heterosexual, married and usually white, and this was not really questioned. The welcome increase in diversity of students and teachers brings this more into plain sight for, perhaps overdue, critical reflection, particularly about the slow rate of change.

It goes without saying that the journal welcomes contributions on this subject.