NEWS ARTICLE: Esther Bick’s method via video link: avoidance of contact or integration of modern technologies? Infant observation during the pandemic in Russia

ABSTRACT

What distinguishes infant observation using a video link is the fact that it completely transforms the classical infant observation method, as the contact is established using smartphone camera and screen. The authors attempt to describe and analyse particular features video observation in some observers’ experience in Russia.

KEYWORDS:

• Infant observation in Russia
• the Bick method
• COVID-19 pandemic
• video observation

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes on the contributors

Tatyana V. Alexandrova is a psychologist and psychotherapist who graduated from the Moscow State Psychological and Pedagogical University (MGPPU). She worked with children’s groups in the Centre for Psychological and Pedagogical Correction and Rehabilitation (TsPPKiR), ‘Yuzhnoe’. She is an infant observation teacher and carried out three infant observations with Alex and Hélène Dubinsky. She is the co-founder of the Psychologists’ Association Centre for the Development of Psychoanalytic Studies of Multi-family and Group methods, known as ‘The Childhood Clinic’.

Olga V. Papsueva is both a psychologist and a training analyst of the IPA Moscow Group of psychoanalysts. She graduated from the Moscow State University (MSU) and worked with children, adolescents and adults at the Moscow Research institute of Psychiatry for 15 years, and at the Institute of Prosthetics and Prosthesis Building for five years. She headed the Department of Psychotherapy at the Centre for Psychological and Pedagogical Correction and Rehabilitation (TsPPKiR) ‘Strogino’. She has taught infant observation for 20 years after attending infant observation seminars with Alex and Hélène Dubinsky. She is the President of the Psychologists’ Association Centre for the Development of Psychoanalytic Studies of Multi-family and Group methods, ‘The Childhood Clinic’.

Notes

Editor's note: The Journal is pleased to publish this news article bringing a Russian perspective on infant observation during the Covid 19 pandemic. It feels particularly poignant at a time of grave international tension over the Ukraine war to share thinking about development in infant observation with Russian colleagues.

1 The observer was O.A. Tishkovets. The seminar was led by O.V. Papsueva and T.V. Aleksandrova. The second observer was N.A. Sadova, who was a member of the seminar led by O.V. Papsueva.