The role of infant observation in developing the capacity of workers with refugee and asylum-seeking families in France

The paper describes an outreach project, set up as a collaborative endeavour between a centre for asylum seekers in a town to the east of Paris and a child guidance clinic; the project's aim was to understand and address the emotional needs of asylum-seeker children, in which close observation played a central role. It presents the rationale for developing a project that supported the workers' confidence in their capacity to think about and respond to the needs of the children in their care, and goes on to present a detailed analysis of the particular emotional needs of the children and their families. The paper also describes the weekly playgroups that the workers set up for traumatised children and adolescents in which the presence of an observer helped them to remain emotionally receptive in their work with highly traumatised families. Observational vignettes illustrate some of the insight gained about the children's behaviour and difficulties. Monthly work discussions of observations supported the workers' capacities to work with the children, and helped them to shape a new way of working using observation and a psychoanalytic frame; two workers evaluated the work and the ways in which both team and children were helped

The gaze, the mirror and representation of a self in the treatment of a young boy with pervasive developmental delay and marked autistic features

This paper explores the ways in which the ‘recognition of a self' aspect of mirroring, as epitomised by the mother's gaze of her newborn at the breast, served to set development in motion in the case of Adam, a little boy of four and a half, who was referred for psychotherapy after receiving a diagnosis of pervasive developmental delay with marked autistic features. The paper uses detailed clinical material to track Adam's development of a representation of his self and his object and his use of the mirror in this process. The author shows how Adam went from not recognising his reflection in the mirror to seeing the reflection of himself in the therapist's eyes and then using the mirror to support his exploration and internalisation of the permanence of his self and his objects as well as their physical and psychic characteristics and functions. The author also seeks to demonstrate ways in which Adam's use of the mirror facilitated emotional engagement and working through of painful aspects of the infantile transference: these included primitive anxieties related to being seen and taken into the mind by the object feelings of terror and loss inherent in experiencing the self and the object as separate and intense rivalry and envy of the other occupants of the object's mind. Lastly, the author seeks to show how Adam's work at the mirror linked to the emergence of verbal language and the development of symbolic thinking

Thinking lest we be forced to remember: rebuilding a mind to think, play with and forget thoughts about trauma in a 10-year-old boy

This paper retraces the steps in the recovery of a capacity for thinking in a boy who was five at the time his mother was tragically murdered by his father and almost 11 years old when he began psychoanalytic psychotherapy. It describes the emotional and technical difficulties of working psychotherapeutically when there seemed to be neither the thoughts nor the words with which to engage and experience the mental pain that lay frozen behind his eyes. I describe in detail the slow unfolding of a process in which Michael appeared to be quite literally rebuilding the structure and internal space of his mind in his play and in the transference. He needed to repair his internal thinking apparatus and recover his capacity for containment before he could house his own traumatic feelings and thoughts and think about them with me. The commensal relationship of container and contained grew out of tolerating unbearable amounts of doubt (W.R. Bion, Learning from Experience, London: Heinemann, 1962) in the transference–countertransference. This was only possible through the triangular space provided by the presence of an analyst and a supervisor in my mind and the generous support provided by colleagues and Michael's dedicated grandparents

Can you read the writing on the wall: what needs to happen for a researcher to see what she is observing?

This article describes and evaluates the use of infant observation to study children's transitions to infant school in Switzerland. Vignettes from observations are cited in order to illustrate the nature of the observations, and excerpts from the students' notes are examined to analyse the interpretations she made. We discuss these two sets of findings to show some of the pitfalls of using infant observation when the researcher has not been trained in it, and there is no weekly seminar to support the emergence of insight into the experience of the children observed

Teaching and implementing classroom observations in France and Italy: a preliminary review

The paper reviews observational courses developed for teachers and social workers in Italy and France over the past 10 years, with a view to gaining a more nuanced understanding of how these professionals are helped to observe and hold in mind and process what a child and they themselves may be experiencing in a given situation. The paper uses examples to illustrate what has been gained by these initiatives and discusses the results in a way that is intended to inform future training and research

Ouvrir son regard

Observer des enfants dans la classe est une façon de faire prendre conscience à des futurs enseignants de la dimension affective de l'enseignement, complémentaire à la transmission des savoirs. Il s'agit de leur faire mesurer l'importance de leur place d'adulte de référence, de les préparer à répondre aux attentes et sollicitations des enfants