The experience of (tele) infant observation during the Covid-19 pandemic (March 2020–December 2020)

ABSTRACT

In this paper, the author shares her experience of the use of telecommunication during the Covid-19 pandemic in teaching infant observation in Greece. She offers an account of the changes, difficulties, reservations and concerns regarding the use of telecommunication in infant observation. During the ten months of the Covid-19 pandemic, the seminars on infant observation had to adapt twice to complete lockdowns. As a result, the observations in the natural setting of the baby’s home changed and became tele-observations. The difficulties of teaching infant observation during this period, as well as the anxieties they induced in both the seminar leader and the observers, are described. Feelings about concepts such as loss, absence, separation, distance and closeness were felt in a much stronger way in the countertransference during this period. It was seen as important that prior to online infant observation, observations in the home had preceded. On the other hand, it seemed that both types of observations could act together, in a supplementary mode with each other.

KEYWORDS:

• Infant observation
• tele-observation
• Covid-19 pandemic
• psychoanalytic thought

Acknowledgments

Thanks are due to all members of the Infant Observation Seminar Group, trainees in the Hellenic Association of Child and Adolescent Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (HACAPP). I am most grateful to the families and their babies who ensured the continuation of the observation process during the pandemic.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Marie Ange Widdershoven

Marie Ange Widdershoven is a Psychologist from the University of Amsterdam and a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist trained at the Hellenic Institute of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy for Children and Adolescents (HACAPP) in Athens. She is a member and supervisor of HACAPP and was delegate for Greece in the European Federation of Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy (EFPP), in the Child and Adolescent section. In HACAPP she is seminar leader in the Infant Observation Seminar and member of the Educational Board. She worked as an External Supervisor in the Children’s Hospital “Agia Sofia”, Child Psychiatric Department, where she was a therapist and a supervisor, in the early intervention program. She worked for 30 years in the “Doxiadis Diagnostic and Therapeutic Unit for Children and Adolescents” as head of the Child Psychotherapy Department. At this moment, she is the Head of Mental Health and Social Services Department of the “Theotokos Foundation” in Athens. Here she works with children with developmental delays and other disabilities and she leads a prevention and early intervention program. She also worked more than 30 years in Private Practice in Athens.