Infant observation and its applications still constitutes the bedrock for understanding the origin of the human mind, and the training of all the authors is rooted in this method of observation as well as in the work of later object relations clinicians and theoricians (Klein, Bion, Winnicott, Meltzer etc). The authors from the São Paulo Mother-Baby Relationship Study Centre, working in the fields of infant, child and family psychology, cover a variety of interesting settings, such as: the seminar room where Esther Bick herself led a discussion group; the homes of observed babies; the consulting room with parents and children in therapy; a nursery; a child psychiatric hospital department; and a neonatal intensive care unit. The book ends with an innovative and timely chapter on research on the link between maternal reverie and the development of symbolic play in babies.



Marisa Pelella Mélega is a psychiatrist, psychoanalyst in private practice and a Training Analyst and Supervisor at the Brazilian Psychoanalytic Society of São Paulo. She founded the São Paulo Mother–Baby Relationship Study Centre in 1987, receiving accreditation from the Centro Studi Martha Harris, in Rome. She teaches at the Brazilian Institute as a child psychoanalyst, 1996. Her clinical and research interests include applications of the Esther Bick observation model, as in assessment and therapeutic interventions with parents and children.



Mariângela Mendes de Almeida is a clinical psychologist and psychotherapist in São Paulo, Brazil, She has been working in the field of mental health and child development since 1982. Between 1988 and 1993, she was a Clinical Associate at the Child and Family Department, Tavistock Clinic, where she received her MA in Psychoanalytic Observational Studies (from the University of East London). She is currently training as an analyst at the Institute of the Brazilian Psychoanalytic Society of São Paulo. She specializes in early interventions on primitive states of mind in children with severe emotional disturbances.



Mariza Leite da Costa trained as a Clinical Psychologist in Brazil before training further as a Child and Adolescent Psychotherapist at the Tavistock Clinic. She is a member of the ACP and holds an MA in Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy. She is a former Fellow of Essex University, where she taught Infant Observation at the Centre for Psychoanalytical Studies. She has a particular interest in autistic spectrum disorders and is in full time private practice.



Foreword



Daisy Maia Bracco



Introduction: Esther Bick's infant observation method



Daisy Maia Bracco



1. Esther Bick in South America: supervision of the observation of a baby girl from birth to eight months



Esther Bick



2. Aspects of supervision: an observation seminar about a ten-month-old triplet



Marisa Pelella Mélega







3. The flame of psychic life: reviewing a two-year observation twenty years later



Mariza Leite da Costa







4. Early feeding difficulties: risk and resilience in early mismatches within the parent-child relationship



Mariângela Mendes de Almeida







5. Psychoanalytic observation: the Esther Bick method as a clinical tool



Magaly Miranda Marconato Callia







6. The psychoanalytic observer as model for a maternal containing function



Marisa Pelella Mélega







7. The psychoanalytic observer at the nursery



Ana Rosa Campana de Almeida Pernambuco and Maria da Graça Palmigiani







8. The psychoanalytic observer in paediatric assessment



Marisa Pelella Mélega and Maria da Graça Palmigiani







9. Joint parent and child therapeutic interventions



Marisa Pelella Mélega



10. A family assessment based on the Esther Bick method



Ana Rosa Campana de Almeida Pernambuco







11. The observer in the neonatal intensive care unit



Mariza S. Inglez de Souza







12. Infant observation and its developments: working with autistic children



Mariângela Mendes de Almeida



13. A research methodology for the study of symbolic activity in infants



Marisa Pelella Mélega and Maria Cecília Sonzogno



References and Bibliography



Index