From being a student to becoming an infant observation young seminar leader with nursery teachers^*

* First presented as a parallel paper at the 8th international conference for teachers of infant observation at the Tavistock Clinic in August 2018.

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a newly qualified child psychotherapist’s first experience of teaching, using an application of Esther Bick’s infant observation method, with nursery school teachers observing in their own workplace. The seminar leader describes learning form the experience of running the seminar with supervisory support. The teacher group’s increasing ability to observe the young children and the ‘child in their mind’ is linked with developments in the new teacher’s thinking about the task of teaching and the importance of noting her own emotional reaction. She is also acutely aware of her own recent learning as an observer herself. The teaching involves listening with feeling and encouraging the observers to develop by presenting their observations for reflection, encouraging more detail and reflection as time goes by. The new seminar leader’s anxiety about emulating her own observation teachers, and her growing understanding of the powerful forces of unconscious projection which can be utilised to understand more of the young child’s experience, enhances the observer- teachers’ capacity to notice and reflect on what they see.

KEYWORDS:

• Bick infant observation
• young child observation
• teaching
• projection
• anxiety
• projective identification with children

Notes on contributor

Federica Pibiri is a clinical psychologist who trained at the Studiorum of Bologna and then at the Centro Studi Martha Harris in Florence where she gained a postgraduate diploma in psychoanalytic observational studies in 2013, and then qualified as a child and adolescent psychotherapist in 2018. She is a member of the professional association of child psychotherapists, AMMPHIA, Florence. She now works in private practice and in the neuropsychiatry and paediatrics public service in Empoli. She works with nurseries and early childhood services and in the voluntary sector she offers preparation for childbirth classes and psychological support for new mothers.

Notes

* First presented as a parallel paper at the 8th international conference for teachers of infant observation at the Tavistock Clinic in August 2018.