In this paper, starting from the idea of the relationship between maternal and paternal functions in the processing of experience, the author takes as the object of her thinking an account of a particular observation and its discussion in an observation seminar group. Using the example of early splitting and projective identification, which she first delineates in terms of Klein's (1946) seminal paper, 'Notes on some schizoid mechanisms,' she reflects on this process in the observation, the group and in the mind of the teacher. The seminar leader is also involved, she suggests, in an ongoing process. She needs to exercise caution in the fine balancing of her own maternal containing and paternal explicating processes, in order to facilitate rather than foreclose on the learning which can take place in the experiential group setting. The author exemplifies this in a particular narrative of teaching and learning which occurred within a single seminar, halfway through the first year of the students' experience. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2009 APA, all rights reserved) (from the journal abstract

This paper gives an account of teaching observational studies to a non-clinical body of students on an MA course in Psychoanalytic Studies at the Tavistock Clinic. The students come from a wide variety of professional backgrounds beyond the helping professions. The differential tasks for students and teachers are described, and these are illustrated by both group material and student interviews. What this shows is that the observational process has an impact beyond the module and the course, and affects the experiences of students in their differing professions, as well as teachers who need to adapt and refine their methods in order to provide effective learning for their students.

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In this paper, the author revisits the classic idea formulated by Hanna Segal that creativity takes place from a depressive position impulse to repair previous destruction wrought on internal parental objects. The author proposes that in the light of psychoanalytic work with deprived and borderline children, there may need to be a rider to this formulation. By suggesting the myths of Ariadne and Orpheus alongside that of Oedipus as aids to psychoanalytic understandings, a development is posited here which may coexist with or even precede depressive struggles. Dread and hope, the author suggests, accompany both the creative artist and the child on the path towards expression of creative impulses. Such impulses exist before a 'depressive position' arrival point, or may follow it, in a cyclical rather than linear development, as Britton -drawing on Bion -suggested. This does not diminish the importance of reparation both in the individual psyche and in creative work, but makes space for the possibility of a preceding or perhaps coexisting stage. Intimations of this were already present in the work of Melanie Klein, but were not elaborated in the way suggested here, as will be indicated. The author illustrates this with her own clinical work, and proposes that similar processes may be at work in the evolution of psychoanalytic understandings.