Editorial

It is a great pleasure to introduce the first issue of Infant Observation for 2017, which is published rather late in the year, for which, as Editor, I offer my apologies. Nonetheless, I hope readers will agree that it has been worth the wait. This is a very significant issue, in which we are very fortunate indeed. Our good fortune is that we are publishing a rich, scholarly and illuminating paper written by the late Susan Sherwin-White, entitled ‘Melanie Klein and Infant Observation’, written by the author at the same time as her book, Melanie Klein revisited: Pioneer and revolutionary in the psychoanalysis of young children published earlier in 2017. For reasons of length, the paper on infant observation was not included in the book’s final text. Very sadly, Sherwin-White died shortly after the book’s completion, but before it was published. She was in complete agreement with the suggestion made by the Editors of the book and of the Tavistock Clinic Series that the paper on Klein and Infant Observation should be published separately in Infant Observation.

Susan Sherwin-White had two careers both of which come together in her research into Melanie Klein. As Margot Waddell and Jocelyn Catty (2017) write in the Series Forward to the book on Klein, Melanie Klein revisited represents not simply the wisdom of an experienced child psychotherapist with an eye for detail and a talent for bringing the insights of a modern child-psychoanalytic technique into a creative juxtaposition with the work of its pioneer. It also represents a huge achievement in scholarly research, conducted primarily in the Melanie Klein archive held by the Library of the Wellcome Trust. Sherwin-White was no stranger to such scholarly endeavour. Before training as a child psychotherapist in the late 1980s, she had had a distinguished career as an ancient historian, first gaining a DPhil in Greek history from Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford, and then lecturing in Greek History at Bedford College, London. Her obituarist, Catherin Slater, writes that

She combined an epigrapher’s meticulous eye for detail with the big-picture thinking which enabled her to break new ground in interpreting the relationship between the Greeks and the ancient local cultures they encountered as they advanced in the Middle East. (Waddell and Catty in Sherwin-White, 2017)

The combination of the eye for detail and the bigger picture thinking also shines through in the paper about Klein and Infant Observation. Firstly, the detail is there. Sherwin-White explored the Klein archive and found there many interesting things. These include Klein’s talks, many of which were given at the Institute of Education in London, and which she illustrates with fascinating observations of her own grandchildren, and of the children of her friends and colleagues. This research, as Lisa Miller mentions in her foreword to Melanie Klein revisited, ‘allows Klein’s voice to shine through’ (2017, 6.).

In her paper on observation, Sherwin-White notes that, by the time of the Controversial Discussions of 1944, between Klein and Anna Freud and their followers, what was at issue was Klein’s concern about the importance of focusing on the mental life of the very young baby; evidence for this might be found in infant observation. However, Klein’s actual use of baby observation and the value she placed on close observation of infants as a potential source of data have been bypassed’. Sherwin-White notes that there may be several reasons for this, including ignorance of the existence of Klein’s observations in the Archive, and also that a paper written in 1944 did not appear in print until 1991, and only then available to those delving deeply into The Freud Klein Controversies, 1942–1945 (King & Steiner, 1992). More mysteriously, ‘On observing the behaviour of young infants’ (Klein, 1952) which includes several observational vignettes received little attention either.

Klein’s work and her theories have always attracted strongly polarized views, and there remains in many people’s minds an idea that she is not interested in the external life events of babies and young children. Sherwin-White’s paper tells us clearly and unequivocally that this was not so. She observed the babies and children of friends and colleagues as well as her grandchildren, and used vignettes in straightforward talks about such things as feeding, weaning, separating at night, babies’ sadness, night terrors, play, and so on.

Sherwin-White introduces us to new perspectives on the evidence Klein used in developing her theories. It is abundantly clear that she comes back time and time again to the significance of loving, thoughtful parents in mitigating the extreme feelings of very early baby life. The baby’s extreme feelings become less so because of repeated experiences of being cared-for, loved and remembered despite what they might fear they have done to their mother or their parents, in their minds.

There is also the question of whether or not Klein approved of observing babies and children. Sherwin-White seems to believe rather firmly that some of what is reported as Klein’s view on observation might actually have more correctly been the view of the person reporting than of Klein herself. Sherwin-White’s paper allows the reader to become acquainted with Klein the observer. In addition to the paper and the book revisiting Klein, another recent book, Reading Klein, by Margaret and Michael Rustin (2017) will, one hopes, revive an interest in Klein and provide us with a new opportunity to look again at what she wrote and to weigh up for ourselves the balance between the impact of external circumstances on the development of particular states of mind.

As befits an issue which brings a new perspective on Melanie Klein as a brilliant observer of babies and young children, we include two articles about observation. The baby observation paper, by Magda O’Connor, rather appropriately addresses the question of the impact of ordinary loss and separation on the baby’s developing mind, in the context of the relationship with his mother. He works hard to take in a good object, as he thinks and plays, working through anxiety, rage and rivalry as he discovers that gradual acceptance of the loss of the breast and the baby position leads to new and unexpected pleasures and authentic development.

In a second observation paper about a male observer, ‘Another man in the house’, Sam Zuppardi explores the realm of unconscious Oedipal phantasy amidst the arrival of a new baby and a male observer. The observer’s struggle with the powerful, unsettling and dynamics in the family seem to exist in parallel with the feelings of mother and father, as step by step, the parents, the observer, and the baby adjust.

Debbie Hindle contributes a paper of her own, as well as the review with another article in our ‘works of the imagination’ thread – this time focusing on Maurice Sendak’s Where the Wild Things are, an opera by Sendak and Oliver Knussen in which the figures from Sendak’s book come to gigantic and alarming life as Hindle takes us on Max’s adventure from bedtime and grumpy separation from his mother to safe return after his adventures with the Wild Things. Sam Zuppardi’s paper on children’s picture books (2016) also refers to Sendak’s ‘other’ well-known book about Mickey’s night-time fears and their (temporary) resolution after his visit to the ‘night kitchen’.

The final paper is about work with parents and their young children – a fascinating, charitably funded project which enables parents on two Greek Islands to meet a parent infant psychotherapist (Marie-Ange Widdershoven), who does most of the work through an internet video connection – which enables early intervention to help parents and toddlers back on to a healthier developmental track without a long wait.

Notes

1 This issue of Infant Observation also includes a review of Melanie Klein Revisited, by Debbie Hindle who also co-edited a book with Sherwin-White, Sibling matters: A psychoanalytic, developmental, and systemic approach (2014).