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Psychoanalytical infant observation: a critical assessment

Having become an established part of psychotherapy training in Britain, infant observation is being used increasingly as a research method in conjunction with clinical findings. This raises questions about the relevance of empirical research to psychoanalysis, including the use of infant observation as a justification and/or a source of psychoanalytic knowledge. Rather than attempt a summary overview, this paper comprises a selective critical assessment of certain developments in psychoanalytic infant observation. The critical focus of the paper concerns the different uses of infant observation in teaching and research methods. My main argument is that the method of infant observation is most useful in the context of learning and teaching.