EDUCATION SECTION: Infant observation in Britain:The Tavistock approach

The author draws attention to something distinctive in the psychoanalytic 'air' from the early 1960s onwards: the strong emphasis upon the very early psychological, emotional and cognitive view of infants and young children. She focuses on the work of two analysts in particular, Esther Bick and Wilfred Bion, and the comparable, though differently expressed, centrality of the observational method in their work. Each explored not only the pathological picture but also the nature and integrative function of psychic containment in earliest mental life. Each also shared a preoccupation with what constituted a psychoanalytic attitude and with the process of becoming a psychoanalyst and, in Bick's case, a child analyst or psychotherapist. The author provides an historical background to the idea of observation, followed by an account, with detailed examples, of the nature of infant observation and the observational method as taught and practised at the Tavistock Clinic, London since the late 1940s, and subsequently in many other training institutions. Here the themes of Bick and Bion are constantly interrelated such that the prototype or model for the creation of emotional meaning and thought can be appreciated and learning from experience can take place.     

Adrian Stokes and the portrait of Melanie Klein

This paper focuses on the offer by the art writer Adrian Stokes to commission and pay for a portrait of the psychoanalyst Melanie Klein by the artist William Coldstream. It details some of the precursors of this offer in Stokes's preceding involvement first with Klein and then with Coldstream; her response to this offer; and its outcome and aftermath in Stokes's subsequent writing about Klein and Coldstream.     

Transcendence,transmission and transformation: the transcendent function in infant observation

Abstract: This article discusses the activation of the transcendent function as it operates through a series of complex parallel processes occurring within a Tavistock Model Infant Observation Group whose location is Palo Alto, California. We follow the observer, a seasoned female analyst, through her final two observations as she is caught initially in the central family complex that does not allow for a conscious ending to this three‐year observational period. Subsequently through the work of the transcendent function within the group, a discussion of the observer's ensuing paradoxical enactment takes place as we watch how this observer becomes able to help the family reach a termination not previously possible. Moving within a dynamic field that includes the infant observation group, the observed baby and his family, we experience the numinosity of the transformation that is activated. We will explore the ongoing encounter between the group mind, the observer and the observed as mutations within this dynamic field enable a genuine experience of mourning that has a profound effect on the observed baby and family.     

Self-harm by omission: A question of skin containment

Abstract

This paper explores the phenomenon of ‘self-harm by omission’ and its relationship to other kinds of self-harming behaviour and to disturbances of psychic skin functioning (Bick, 1968 Bick, E. 1968. The experience of the skin in early object relations. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 49: 484–486. [PubMed], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). Process material from work with a patient ‘Kate’ is introduced to illustrate and clarify the matters under consideration. The conceptual framework provided by psychic skin theory is described, with particular reference to the defences of ‘toughening’ and ‘porosity’ and their relevance to understanding different kinds of self-harm. Arising from this work, suggestions are advanced with regard to further development and an extended range of application of a ‘skin containment’ conceptual framework.