Some reflections on an observation: fine-tuning the capacity to take in a baby girl's lived experience

Abstract

The author describes her experience of observing a baby girl from birth (undertaken as a requirement of clinical training) and of the impact on her as observer and recipient of powerful, infantile projections. This alerts her to the qualities of this baby's ‘holding environment’ which includes the total situation and the degree to which the baby felt contained. The metaphor of body and mind as musical instrument underlines the necessity for fine-tuning to alert oneself to the experience of the moment and the intensity of infantile experience from which the observer can learn much about herself as well as the baby's emotional life.

Keywords:

• infant observation
• emotional life
• projection
• holding
• second skin
• avoidant attachment
• developing personality
• identification
• introjective processes
• facilitating attachment

Notes

1. A well-known British ‘baby expert’.