Donald Winnicott

Donald Woods Winnicott (April 7th 1896 with Plymouth - January 28th 1971) is a doctor, pediatrist and British psychoanalyst .

In addition to an enthusiastic clinical practice of his trade to which he testifies in many works, one also owes in Winnicott of important concepts such as that of Transitional object, a particular vision of the Oneself broken up into truth and false coil, or that of sufficiently good Mère.

Biography

Donald Wood Winnicott was born with Plymouth, in the Devon, in 1896, in a family of the British middle-class, “… before the release of the First World War, at one time when people believed deeply that the things would continue to progress insofar as the men would become increasingly enlightened. ”

His/her father, Sir Fréderick Winnicott, are the mayor of Plymouth. It grows in a stable and happy hearth, “… adored his parents and of its two older sisters. ”

Its choice to become doctor is very related to his particularly independent temperament. It is in particular following a fracture which makes it dependant on other people that it definitively decides for this profession: I could not imagine that, during all the remainder of my life, I would be obliged to depend on the doctors, if I would be wounded or fallen sick. The best means of me of drawing some, it was to become doctor moi-même.

Remarkable athlete (they are the upheavals due to the First World War which prevents it from reaching an Olympic level), raises shining, it thus makes medicine. During the war, he is surgeon-trainee on a destroyer. The physiology, which he studies, disappoints it, he finds it cold, eliminating the emotions. It is directed finally towards the pediatry which enables him “… to treat the whole individual and to locate the child in the family and social context. ”

Lately graduate, it feels the limits and the dead ends of a purely physical medical approach, and discovers the work of S. Freud which seems to him to make it possible to cross them. It begins its training of analyst in 1923, at the same time as it starts to hold of the consultations in pediatry. Again limits arise: at the time, the Psychanalyse is addressed to cultivated adults and not to children.

It is about one particular moment in the history of the psychoanalysis, in particular in the United Kingdom, and children psychoanalyze it is only with its stammerings. S. Freud is hardly interested there. The only psychoanalysis of work freudienne is that of “small Hans”, that S. Freud did not meet. The “Petit Hans” was analyzed by his/her father, who, exchanged to him with S. Freud. The field of investigations was left with his/her daughter Anna Freud, teacher of formation. It publishes in 1927 the psychoanalytical treatment of the children and proceeds in this way in Austria. When it is forced to flee its country in 1938, it joined London where since 1925 Melanie Klein works.

D. Winnicott will start its formation of Psychanalyste with James Strachey, freudien, will continue it with Joan Riviere, kleinienne (it has Co-writing with Mr. Klein the book the love and hatred ). Mr. Klein itself will take part in the formation of D. Winnicott as a supervisor. This last had an admiring memory of it, Mr. Klein arriving to better knowing its patients than itself. D. Winnicott was not properly kleinien. With the choice of the party and the confrontation, he preferred a third way, personal.

If it became the most prestigious figure about it, D. Winnicott never became the ideologist about it, nor the leader. One can notice that, large among the large ones, it is the only one not to have made school (contrary to Sigmund Freud, of Melanie Klein or Jacques Lacan).

D. Winnicott very quickly will follow its own way, by presenting its projections like complementary to those of S. Freud and of Mr. Klein and he “… was not long in appearing to the analysts like a revolutionary colleague and rather embarrassing, which had already thought the pediatrists…”

It seems that one can find at the founder of the psychoanalysis the points which he did nothing but evoke and which D. Winnicott then developed. Concerning the play and creativity, S. Freud writes in 1908:

“Each child who plays leads like a writer, insofar as it creates a world with his idea, or rather arranges this world in a way which it likes… He plays seriously. What is opposed to the play is not the serious one, but reality. ”

There Mr. Mannoni sees the starting point of the work of D. Winnicott which “… opens a third way starting from the text of Freud. ” and which will carry out it until potential space.

As for the taking into account of the environment and whereas the psychoanalysis thinks above all in terms of intra-psychic conflict, J. - B. Pontalis suggests that D. Winnicott is based on a note of S. Freud (where this last evokes to take into account the mother) to develop all its theory of the environment. Freud made the objection that an organization completely governed by the pleasure principle and thus being unaware of external reality could not remain for an amount of time, so short is there it. But he adds: “The recourse to a fiction of this kind is justified nevertheless if it is considered that the small child - for little whom one holds account also care of his mother - realizes, almost, in fact, a mental system of this type. ” One could say that it is on this passage between indents that D. Winnicott rests to develop its theory of the relation, of the coupling mother-infant. “This thing which one calls an infant does not exist”, there could write, J. - B. Pontalis, “Birth and recognition of “self””.

J. - B. Pontalis be appropriate that the theory of the development of D. Winnicott can find its “legitimacy freudienne”, its continuity of with the work of Freud in the note to which it refers, but it is not very probable that D. Winnicott felt need for a “guarantee freudienne” to dare to advance its own developments.

However, D. Winnicott quotes itself this note which for him indicates that “Freud thus fully paid homage to the part played by the maternal care, and one can suppose that if it did not tackle this subject, it is that it did not feel ready to analyze its implications. ” Is not to find a legitimacy unspecified since this text was written in 1960, towards the end of its life. That illustrates simply what he always said: its work is in complementarity of that of Sigmund Freud.

In connection with Mr. Klein who preceded it in the work near young children but which did not take into account the mother, D. Winnicott declares that it is because it of it was not able, “by temperament”.

Its theory, which it worked out gradually and which became increasingly complex, is directly resulting from its clinical work. In a discussion with A. Clancier, J. - B. Pontalis notices that in France, very often, an analyst creates a concept which it then tries to use in his practice. Nothing is more foreign with this step than that of D. Winnicott for which “… the facts, it was reality; theories, the human stammering in its effort to seize the facts. ”. Indeed, D. Winnicott, like the whole of “Independent”, falls under the philosophical tradition of British empiricism, with among its characteristics the rejection of the systematic mind.

If it started as pediatrist and even if it preserved this activity until very late, D. Winnicott also became analyst of adults, he followed people psychotics and also dealt with young people placed out of hearth, who had been evacuated of London during the Second world war. From its immense experiment of pediatrist, who lasted nearly forty years, it could find patients, at the adulthood, which it had received as infants, allowing a confrontation of his intuitions and developments with reality of a lived life.

All its life, it communicated its ideas, with its fellow-members pediatrists, psychoanalysts, but also with the parents, the teachers, with the male nurses, as well as with men of law. One of its last texts is a homage to a teacher with whom he worked during the Second world war.

Work and the contribution of Winnicott

The work of D. Winnicott is mainly made up of short texts, of account-returned communications at companies of psychoanalysts, transcriptions of chronicles which it gave to B.B.C, of the conferences made in front of the public ones varied (educational, male nurses, etc). None of its books was composed like such, it acts of compilations of texts, some having been possibly rewritten (as for Jeu and reality for example), with some new parts. The book, as such, D. Winnicott was tested there and left it unfinished (human nature).

Each one of these punctuations, approaching a precise point of its thought, is formulated according to the specific public for which D. Winnicott intends it, which can make it possible to consider three axes:

Clinical : As a pediatrist and a psychoanalyst, he works to look after the most pathogenic effects of the bankruptcies of the environment of the people whom he meets in consultation because his major concern, it is the mental health of the person. This one is “… the result of the uninterrupted care which allows a continuity of the personal emotional development. ”. The emotional development will be inlassablement theorized, in a to and from of with clinical work. The development emotional, of the birth, even front, until old age because:

In fact, the majority of the processes which take birth at the first age never are completely established and the growth which continues throughout the childhood during the adult life and even of old age, continues with the fortifier.

Theoretical : It will specify, refine, the characteristics of what it calls “the environment”, of what returns it suitably good or not as well as the consequences of such or such of its bankruptcies, i.e. when it was not suitably good, from the point of view of the child. It also will describe the whole of the processes to work in the development of the child which gradually bring it towards the state of an independent person having the feeling to be real and “… that the life is worth the sorrow to be lived. ”. Among his important contributions to the theory, one can underline the release of the transitional phenomena, at the origin of potential space, place of the creativity and cultural experiment, i.e. in the final analysis, the place which signs the humanity of the human one.

Prophylactic : Throughout its career, Winnicott did not cease diffusing ideas: with his/her colleagues, with all the people working near children, in order to prevent the pathogenic bankruptcies of the environment of which it can observe the consequences in its clinical activity. It is about a lucid and deliberated action. D. Winnicott always seems to have been anxious as much as possible to widen the field of intervention of psychotherapy. It on several occasions refers to “cases” looked after via the parents because it was not possible with the child to follow a therapy (living too far, this one being too expensive…). As he points out it: “It should not be forgotten that there will be never enough psychotherapists to treat all those which need to be neat. Thus, to diffuse its ideas takes part of a will to reduce the number of people needing psychotherapy, to contribute its personal share to the company.

Elements of theory

Presentation: The development of the newborn according to Winnicott

A newborn without physical disorders nor neurological has an innate tendency to develop until becoming a person total, creative, who believes in the life. So that this tendency can be expressed, it is necessary and sufficient that the environment in which will evolve/move, to grow and develop the newborn is shown suitably good, from its point of view to him.

During the postnatal period, the unit, it is not the baby, but the unit individual-environment . It is the mother of the child who is the best capable one to provide him a suitably good environment. At this stage, the term “mother” is equivalent to “environment” and thus includes the father if this one deals with the newborn. The father intervenes in two manners: as a mother, when it is occupied of the newborn and also by preserving the mother and the child from what could come to be involved between the two. So that the mother is indeed able to provide such a thing, it is necessary that she could and can always profit itself from an environment of a certain quality. To fulfill this role, it is necessary that its relation with the father of the baby and also its relation with its family and the circles increasingly wide which surround its family and form the company give to the mother the sense of security, the feeling to be liked.

During the pregnancy, it acquires the capacity (the primary maternal concern ) to be devoted completely to its future newborn, capacity which it will lose then gradually, with the measurement of the development of the baby. At the beginning, the fetus and the infant depend entirely on what offers to them the alive mother, who it is of her uterus or its maternal care.

Under reserves of the know-described conditions, the tendency to develop will follow the following characteristics. They are various contemporary processes from/to each other, obviously dependant between them, but having their own temporality.

Of a state where the baby is not aware to even be dependant (what D. Winnicott calls the “absolute dependence” or the “double dependence”), this one then will know a situation of dependence, of which he is aware to succeed, or rather will tend towards independence.

At the beginning, the environment must express a perfect adaptation such as the infant is constant in his development, that its “continuous feeling to exist” is preserved. Encroachments or bankruptcies on behalf of its environment would force the infant to react, and to act either, which would break its continuity of existence. To the absolute dependence, “… all is brought back to a crucial question: the invasion or the not-invasion of the life of the infant…” . The environment must be as the air which the baby breathes: this last does not realize that the air is there, but that it has suddenly missed…

For this period of absolute dependence, the mother shows an adaptation very sensitive to the needs for the baby who then makes the experiment (illusory) of the Omnipotence. However, the mother should not certainly be perfect. She (or maternal environment) owes right being a sufficiently good Mère (what implies that she is as much sufficiently bad in order not to be too good), a in a banal manner devoted mother , according to the expressions of Winnicott. It is to say that this experiment of omnipotence, if important for the small whole, cannot nor should not be permanent. Indeed the maternal failures are inevitable and cause disillusion necessary for the exit of initial symbiosis and the progressive recognition of hard reality. But if, at this stage, the maternal failures are excessive in intensity and in duration the infant cannot feel anger with respect to the object weakening of the need and cannot restore its feeling of continuity to be. It is then in prey with the " anguishes primitives" as names them Winnicott. It is of the anguishes of nature psychotic of annihilation, disintegration or disintegration. He does not have other solutions in these circumstances only to dissociate his " coil " (literal translation of the Oneself that one preserved in English in this case) in false-coil and truth-coil, the first dissimulating and protecting the second definitively to put it at the shelter encroachments of the environment responsible for its " anguishes without nom" according to Winnicott. It will result from it during all the life, sometimes, a feeling not to really live or not to be real, at these cut subjects of their " truth-self" authenticate, spontaneous and instinctual even if their social success is excellent.

Gradually, the baby takes the measurement of his dependence and adapts his capacity to inform his environment when it needs him. Indeed, the capacity of the infant to inform his environment that which it needs is not an acquired capacity, although it evolves/moves according to the experiment that the made infant of this environment. Winnicott speaks about the spontaneous gesture of the infant to indicate the fact that the infant, as of his arrival in the world, has from the start a psychomotor activity complexes which enables him to communicate its needs with its maternant environment. This fact, since the years 1990, is amply confirmed by work of the cognitivists who speak about the innate competence of the infant .

This progressive acquisition of independence is not monotonous, with the mathematical direction, the same dependences are overcome several times, reappear, it is a “chaotic” progress. The adaptation of the environment, the mother, takes more and more freedom compared to the needs for the baby, with measurement that develops its capacities to compensate for it.

According to the same “chaotic” diagram, it is towards the one year age that there is integration of the personality which remains partial, precarious, in becoming. This integration is done starting from an not-integrated state. “At the beginning, the infant is made sensory perceptions and of a certain number of phases of motricity. ”

This state of not-integration, the baby can find it when it is at rest, without anguish nor fright. If the environment is suitable, and supports the baby, the whole of these feelings little by little will be integrated in a unit.

It is the development of the intellect which allows the progressive loss of adaptability of the environment, in the sense that the baby compensates then by his comprehension what would be if not lived like an insufficient adaptation. For example, the baby is hungry, he does not eat yet but he intends his mother to prepare there, and he knows that it is the beginning of the meal; young person, it would not have been able to include/understand and would have lived this waiting like a bankruptcy.

Other stages are reached, and, gradually, “… the child becomes able to live a satisfactory personal existence whereas it engages in the businesses of the company. ”

Sufficiently good mother

Truth self-service, forgery self-service

The origin of the forgery self-service has one period whereas baby differentiates not yet “me” and “non-ego” and that it is most of the time not integrated, and when it is there, it is there never completely. It happens sometimes that then, the baby outlines a spontaneous gesture (which “… expresses a spontaneous impulse…”, this one expresses which exists a truth self-service, potential. According to the manner that with the mother to play her part, it will support the establishment of truth self-service or, on the contrary, of the forgery self-service.

If the mother answers what appears like the expression of the omnipotence of the infant, on each occasion, it gives him a significance and takes part in the establishment of truth self-service. One can as say, as thus, it allows his baby to make the experiment of the illusion, of omnipotence. This experiment of the illusion, which has like condition of possibility the active adaptation of the mother, is the precondition to the experiment of the transitional phenomena, from where origin creativity.

If, on the contrary, the mother is unable to answer this demonstration, it substitutes for the spontaneous gesture of the baby it his, to which this last is then constrained to be subjected. This many times repeated situation takes part so that a forgery self-service develops.

Transitional phenomena

The complex of activities called transitional phenomenon, indicates the experiment of the baby when, in his development, it starts to integrate objects “other-that me” with his activities “hand-stops”. It is at the base of the activities to think and fantasmer.

The transitional phenomenon indicates: … the surface of experiment which is intermediate between the inch and the bear, the erotism oral and the true relation object, between the primary creative activity and projection of what was already introjecté, between the primary ignorance of the debt and the recognition of this one.

From the whole of the transitional phenomena, the child extracts sometimes a particular fragment with which it will have an elective report/ratio, it is the transitional object. It should be stressed that it is much less the object in itself which matters that its use. It can be a question of a fabric end, like small melody, mother itself.

Remarks

Philosophical platform

D. Winnicott (like the other members of the “middle group”) falls under the British tradition philosophical of empiricism, which was not without consequence, so much on its step than in its theoretical projections. One could connect the great clinical inventiveness of these psychoanalysts to the importance of the experimentation in the tradition empirist (“the empirists are not theorists, they are experimenters. ”) like to the attention paid to the questions of the early environment of the infant.

In the same way, one could think that the logic of complex relations often present at the “Independent ones” rises from “the” question of the empirists, namely, precisely, the question of the relations. It is not a question of course of the same relations. However it is allowed to suppose that the heirs to an attentive philosophy, not only under the terms but before with their relation, are, in their effort of theorization, also attentive with the relations.

Topology

As for the “topological” form that the discovery of D. Winnicott of the transitional phenomena took, namely that of a “potential space”, place of imagination and creativity, Deleuze brought it closer to what, in particular for Hume, imagination is less one faculty that a place.

One cannot, in addition, neglect the importance which had, for D. Winnicott, the reading of Charles Darwin whose theory rests on a set of interactions individual/medium/species in which the question of the adequacy between the medium and the individual is central (the adaptation).

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