Donald Winnicott Today

Jan Abram

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9780415564878
• eBook ISBN: 9781136254857
• Topic: Psychology
• Subtopic: Mental Health in Psychology
• Index: Psychology

What in Winnicott's theoretical matrix was truly revolutionary for psychoanalysis?

In this book, the editor and contributors provide a rare in-depth analysis of his original work, and highlight the specifics of his contribution to the concept of early psychic development which revolutionised the theory and practice of psychoanalysis. Including re-publications of selected Winnicott papers to set the scene for the themes and explorations in subsequent chapters, the book examines how Winnicott expanded Freud's work, and how his discourse with Melanie Klein sharpened his thought and clinical innovations. Divided into 3 sections, it covers:

• Introductory overviews on the evolution of Winnicott's theoretical matrix
• Personal perspectives from eminent psychoanalysts on how Winnicott's originality inspired their own work
• Further recent examinations and extensions including new findings from the archives

Drawing on her own extensive knowledge of Winnicott and the expertise of the distinguished contributors, Jan Abram shows us how Winnicott's contribution constitutes a major psychoanalytic advance to the concept of subjectivity. As such, it will be an inspiration to experienced psychoanalysts, psychotherapists and all those interested in human nature and emotional development.

Part One Introductory overviews

1 D.W.W. on D.W.W.¹

D.W. Winnicott

DOI: 10.4324/9780203105702-1

Winnicott's notes for his talk to the 1952 Club ² January 1967

The method of investigation. P-A.	Freud
Protest against reference to universal regression from Id satisfaction-frustration in	A. Balint Ribble
Oedipal triangle	Suttie Lowenfeld
Positive-examination of actual infant-parent relationship	Freud Klein
Diagnosis Theory of psycho-neurosis
Freud
Klein for depression and paranoia
Schizophrenia and schizoid phases
1940 Delinquency
Hope Antisocial Tendency Stealing Aggression
Till secondary gains
Delinquency Object relating Controls
Classification of Environment (postponed) became facilitating environment	Greenacre
Primary Maternal Preoccupation
Adaptation, de-adaptation
Dependence	Bowlby
Individual maturational processes
Heredity
Conflict-free sphere in Ego	Hartmann
Primitive Emotional Development
Study of Individual without loss of interest in environment
Early is not Deep
Add Delusional Transference	Little
Real ME FEELINGS	Fairbairn
Aggression movement – object in the way = NOT-ME found by aggression (becoming complex)	Erikson Laing
Object Seeking Transitional Phenomena
Essential Paradox
I AM A paranoid position
Alone, in the presence of second paradox
Environment as experienced
Added up as memories integrated into belief in environment = self control
Add root of paranoia in I AM + introjected environment
Mania: return of repressed i.e. deprivation of environmental controls identification with environment price: loss of identity creative spontaneity (Practical applications)
Meanwhile: exploiting Klein contribution compare dissociation (splitting) with repression
Hence I AM stage integration to a unit
Capacity for concern
Depressive mood
‘value of depression’
In terms of management: the teaching of skills – vis á vis reparation
In Social Work
The holding technique
Feed-back to P-A
Psyche-soma – relative to intellect
Intellect exploited
Psycho-somatic disorder: a call back to the body ego from flight to the intellectual
Psychosomatic patient splits medical care
Two categories of people
A. Carry around ‘having been mad’
B. Not so
Mad means breakdown of ego-defences (as existed at the time, including mother’s ego-support) with clinical appearance of archaic or unthinkable anxiety:	Fordham
Falling forever
De-integration
Disorientation
Depersonalization etc.
Panic as a defence against unthinkable anxiety
Winnicott axiom
A. Fear of madness, madness that was
B. Drive to remember by experiencing
Aetiology
Surprise
Psychosis Privation
AST Deprivation
Psycho-neurosis Internal strains and stresses in ‘not too bad’ environment
Concept of good-enough mother	Hartmann
Mother’s adaptation Primary Maternal
Preoccupation
Not mechanical
Not primarily via contraptions cf. in autism
Contribution to concept of sublimation	Freud
Three areas for living
A. Psychic personal reality (inside)
B. Relationships to objects
Behaviour in the actual world
C. Cultural
Located in potential space between child playing alone and ‘mother’ whose presence is necessary
Implications for Ego theory
Ego area (not conflict-free sphere)
Based on actual living experiences that may or may not have reality in a child’s life
Theory of actuality as a projection
But dependence, especially at stage of subjective object
Example: survival of actual after aggressive outburst leads to (or re-inforces) the capacity for fantasy, hate instead of annihilation.	Freud
Add: Excitement (non-orgiastic) at the junction of the subjective and what is objectively perceived – between continuity and contiguity
Additional Notes
Application of these ideas to
Practice of midwifery
Theory of separation
Talking to parents and those with care of children
Social work theory
Psychotherapy, exploitation of first interview
Concept of health richness of potential adulthood sex maturity wisdom
Regression
Adolescent doldrums
Family functioning
Democracy as a development of the functioning family
	Anna Freud Kris

I’ve realized more and more as time went on what a tremendous lot I’ve lost from not properly correlating my work with the work of others. It’s not only annoying to other people but it’s also rude and it has meant that what I’ve said has been isolated and people have to do a lot of work to get at it. It happens to be my temperament, and it’s a big fault.

Let me interrupt myself for a moment, to say that I made some notes. These notes are a little bit along the lines of what I’m going to say. They’re not even properly corrected, let alone having vital significance for hanging on walls; but I thought that if you had a pencil you might feel like writing down Hartmann³ and Hoffer,⁴ you know, in the corner at the edge. At the right-hand edge I left room for you to write all sorts of names in so that you can help me, because I’m now getting to the stage where I really would like to be more correlated.

The other side of the thing is that, with me just as with other people, the development of thought has been along the line of something that has to do with growth, and if I happen to be like somebody else, it just turns up because we’re all dealing with the same material. In fact, the series of papers which have meant anything to me have been a continuation of something that happened in my long ten-year analysis with Mr Strachey⁵ in which I had a series of dreams. I don’t remember any of them, but the point is that I knew that other people had written on this same subject. I also knew that these dreams were different from the others. They were not for analysis; they were consolidations of work done. And I always said that if I’d started at the beginning I’d have written down these dreams so as to collect them one day, but I never did of course. If you started doing this, you’d never dream them. So then after the end of analysis, these things take the form of papers we feel we must write and the amazing thing is that people can be found to listen. I’m really tracing a sort of compulsion; and if only I could do it well it would be a wonderful opportunity.

At the beginning I do know that – like everybody, I suppose, in this room – as soon as I found Freud and the method that he gave us for investigating and for treatment, I was in line with it. This was just like when I was at school and was reading Darwin and suddenly I knew that Darwin was my cup of tea. I felt this tremendously, and I suppose that if there’s anything I do that isn’t Freudian, this is what I want to know. I don’t mind if it isn’t, but I just feel that Freud gave us this method which we can use, and it doesn’t matter what it, leads us to. The point is, it does lead us to things; it’s an objective way of looking at things and it’s for people who can go to something without preconceived notions, which, in a sense, is science.

At the beginning there was myself learning to do analysis as a paediatrician having had a tremendous experience of listening to people talking about babies and children of all ages and having had great difficulty in seeing a baby as human at all. It was only through analysis that I became gradually able to see a baby as a human being. This was really the chief result of my first five years of analysis, so that I’ve been extremely sympathetic with any paediatricians or anybody who can’t see babies as human, because I absolutely couldn’t, however I used to try. So this thing happened and then I became very interested in it all.

When I came to try and learn what there was to be learned about psycho-analysis, I found that in those days we were being taught about everything in terms of the 2, 3 and 4 year-old Oedipus complex and regression from it. It was very distressing to me as someone who had been looking at babies – at mothers and babies – for a long time (already ten to fifteen years) to find that this was so, because I knew that I’d watched a lot of babies start off ill and a lot of them become ill early. For instance, I’ve had a lot of experience like the one I had this week of two very intelligent and normal parents who brought to me the problem of their little baby of 22 months. This baby, at the age of 16 months, had developed a very well organized obsessional neurosis. The parents said, ‘Well, what do we do?’ and I was able to take the psychoanalytic theory and say to them, ‘Do this.’ And they did it and the child dropped the obsessional organization and went forward. It was an absolutely direct application. It seems to me that to have said this now is just simply ordinary experience, but saying it in 1935 in this country would have met with the objection, ‘But it can’t happen.’ There wasn’t an audience for that, because of the fact that to have an obsessional neurosis one would have had a regression from difficulties at the Oedipal stage at 3. I know that I overdo this point, but it was something that gave me a line. I thought to myself, I’m going to show that infants are ill very early, and if the theory doesn’t fit it, it’s just got to adjust itself. So that was that.

Now, there were people talking about these things before I came on the scene. I’m abysmally ignorant of what Miss Freud was doing until she came to this country. After then I’m able to catch up because she herself grew and I watched her growing through the experiences in the War Nurseries⁶ and she changed, I think, tremendously. She found in a practical job which people were doing and which she was supervising that things were happening which really influenced her, and it was a great pleasure to watch her. I think that she made a terrific contribution, but I didn’t know at the time the work that she was doing before this. I also know that Alice Balint⁷ was interested in the things that I’m talking about. There were other people who weren’t analysts who were talking about these things: there was Suttie⁸, and Margaret Lowenfeld⁹ who had a tremendous experience of teaching from the very early twenties about mothers and babies; and Merrill Middlemore¹⁰ too.

Now, as regards the psycho-neuroses, I felt that Freud’s theory and his developing scheme for things, as far as I could gradually come to learn them, covered the subject; and as far as I know I made no contribution at all in that area. As you know, I came very much in 1930 – 1940 into the learning area of Mrs Klein, and she took the trouble to try to help me with cases and tell me about her own work. I took over from her, without always understanding the patterning, a very great deal which I think was original from ...

Table of contents

• Cover Page
• Half Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• List of figures and tables
• Notes on contributors
• Editor’s preface
• Acknowledgements
• Donald Woods Winnicott (1896–1971) chronology
• Introduction—JAN ABRAM
• Part One Introductory overviews
• Part Two Personal perspectives
• Part Three Late Winnicott studies
• Appendix
• Glossary
• Index