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Documenting separation: Tracing a visual culture in post-war psychoanalysis and its contribution to child development

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Abstract

This paper traces a canon of documentary filmmakers in post-war psychoanalysis that informed the nascent field of child development. In examining the context for this visual turn, it analyses James Robertson’s A Two-Year-Old Goes to Hospital (Robertsonfilms and Concordmedia, Suffolk, 1952), which tracks the devastating emotional decline of a young girl separated from her primary carers for eight days. The paper foregrounds the aesthetic dimension inherent in the film’s production, which has been significantly under-investigated. It explores how this figuration of object relations theory contributed to the popularisation of a new discourse in infant subjectivity, namely attachment theory. Understanding is advanced by explicating how documentary film may produce richly contextualised knowledge of psychoanalytic phenomena through its ‘thick description’ of subjectivity situated in the external world. In light of this historical investigation, links between object relations theory and documentary film are made to further support the revival of documentary film as visual research in psychoanalysis.

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  1. Department of Psychology, University of Roehampton, Hollybourne Ave, London, SW15 4JD, UK

    Jonathan Isserow

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Isserow, J. Documenting separation: Tracing a visual culture in post-war psychoanalysis and its contribution to child development. Psychoanal Cult Soc 24, 282–302 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41282-019-00127-7

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