Abstract
This paper describes one of the first examples of ‘participant observation’ in Italy. After the closure of Italian psychiatric hospitals in 1973, some Mental Health Services, the one in Perugia amongst the first ones, arranged home visits by ‘specialised’ psychologists to offer help to ex-patients who were new mothers and could not, for sometime, attend outpatient appointments with the psychiatrists. The specialism consisted in having already had the experience of an infant observation and the participant observations with disturbed mothers and their infants were conducted under close supervision. The paper vividly describes a participant observation carried out in the late 1970s by Fausta Ciotti who was a student of the Tavistock-accredited Rome course.
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