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Paediatric work with children and their mothers led to the development of
his influential concept concerning the "holding environment". [16] Winnicott claimed
that "the foundations of health are laid down by the ordinary mother in her ordinary
loving care of her own baby", [17] central to which was the mother's attentive holding of
her child.
Winnicott considered that the "mother's technique of holding, of bathing, of feeding,
everything she did for the baby, added up to the child's first idea of the mother", as
well as fostering the ability to experience the body as the place wherein one securely
lives. [18] Extrapolating the concept of holding from mother to family and the outside
world, Winnicott saw as key to healthy development "the continuation of reliable
holding in terms of the ever-widening circle of family and school and social life". [19]
Winnicott was influential in viewing the work of the psychotherapist as offering a
substitute holding environment based on the mother/infant bond. [20] Winnicott wrote:
"A correct and well-timed interpretation in an analytic treatment gives a sense of
being held physically that is more real…than if a real holding or nursing had taken
place. Understanding goes deeper". [21]
His theoretical writings emphasised empathy, imagination, and, in the words of
philosopher Martha Nussbaum, who has been a proponent of his work, "the highly
particular transactions that constitute love between two imperfect people." [22]
Anti-social tendency
Connected to the concept of holding is what Winnicott called the anti-social tendency,
something which he argued "may be found in a normal individual, or in one that is
neurotic or psychotic". [23] The delinquent child, Winnicott thought, was looking for a
sense of secure holding lacking in their family of origin from society at large. [24] He
considered antisocial behaviour as a cry for help, fuelled by a sense of loss of
integrity, when the familial holding environment was inadequate or ruptured. [25]
Play and the sense of being real
One of the elements that Winnicott considered could be lost in childhood was what he
called the sense of being – for him, a primary element, of which a sense of doing is
only a derivative. [26] The capacity for being – the ability to feel genuinely alive inside,
which Winnicott saw as essential to the maintenance of a true self – was fostered in
his view by the practice of childhood play. [27]
In contrast to the emphasis in orthodox psychoanalysis upon generating insight into
unconscious processes, Winnicott considered that playing was the key to emotional
and psychological well-being. It is likely that he first came upon this notion from his
collaboration in wartime with the psychiatric social worker, Clare Britton, (later a
psychoanalyst and his second wife) who in 1945 published an article on the
importance of play for children. [28] By "playing", he meant not only the ways that
children of all ages play, but also the way adults "play" through making art, or
engaging in sports, hobbies, humour, meaningful conversation, et cetera. At any age,
he saw play as crucial to the development of authentic selfhood, because when people
play they feel real, spontaneous and alive, and keenly interested in what they're doing.
He thought that insight in psychoanalysis was helpful when it came to the patient as a
playful experience of creative, genuine discovery; dangerous when patients were
pressured to comply with their analyst's authoritative interpretations, thus potentially
merely reinforcing a patient's false self. Winnicott believed that it was only in playing
that people are entirely their true selves, so it followed that for psychoanalysis to be
effective, it needed to serve as a mode of playing.
Two of the techniques whereby Winnicott used play in his work with children were
the squiggle game and the spatula game. The first involved Winnicott drawing a shape
for the child to play with and extend (or vice versa) – a practice extended by his
followers into that of using partial interpretations as a 'squiggle' for a patient to make
use of. [29]
The second, more famous instance involved Winnicott placing a spatula (tongue
depressor) within the child's reach for him to play with. [30] Winnicott considered that
"if he is just an ordinary baby he will notice the attractive object…and he will reach
for it….[then] in the course of a little while he will discover what he wants to do with
it". [31] From the child's initial hesitation in making use of the spatula, Winnicott
derived his idea of the necessary 'period of hesitation' in childhood (or analysis),
which makes possible a true connection to the toy, interpretation or object presented
for transference. [32]
Many of Winnicott's writings show his efforts to understand what helps people to be
able to play, and on the other hand what blocks some people from playing. Babies can
be playful when they're cared for by people who respond to them warmly and
playfully, like a mother who smiles and says, "Peek-a-boo!" when she sees her baby
playfully peeking out from behind his hands. If the mother never responded playfully,
sooner or later the baby would stop trying to elicit play from her. Indeed, Winnicott
came to consider that "Playing takes place in the potential space between the baby and
the mother-figure….[T]he initiation of playing is associated with the life experience of
the baby who has come to trust the mother figure". [33] "Potential space" was
Winnicott's term for a sense of an inviting and safe interpersonal field in which one
can be spontaneously playful while at the same time connected to others (again a
concept that has been extrapolated to the practice of analysis). [34]
Playing can also be seen in the use of a transitional object, Winnicott's term for an
object, such as a teddy bear, that has a quality for a small child of being both real and
made-up at the same time. Winnicott pointed out that no one demands that a toddler
explain whether his Binky is a "real bear" or a creation of the child's own imagination,
and went on to argue that it's very important that the child is allowed to experience the
Binky as being in an undefined, "transitional" status between the child's imagination
and the real world outside the child. [35] For Winnicott, one of the most important and
precarious stages of development was in the first three years of life, when an infant
grows into a child with an increasingly separate sense of self in relation to a larger
world of other people. In health, the child learns to bring his or her spontaneous, real
self into play with others; in a false self disorder, the child has found it unsafe or
impossible to do so, and instead feels compelled to hide the true self from other
people, and pretend to be whatever they want instead. [36] Playing with a transitional
object can be an important early bridge between self and other, which helps a child
develop the capacity to be genuine in relationships, and creative. [37]
Playing for Winnicott ultimately extended all the way up from earliest childhood
experience to what he called "the abstractions of politics and economics and
philosophy and culture…this 'third area', that of cultural experience which is a
derivative of play". [38]
True self and false self
Main article: True self and false self
Winnicott wrote that "a word like self…knows more than we do.". [39] He meant that,
while philosophical and psychoanalytic ideas about the self could be very complex
and arcane, with a great deal of specialised jargon, there was a pragmatic usefulness
to the ordinary word "self" with its range of traditional meanings. For example, where
other psychoanalysts used the Freudian terminology of ego and id to describe
different functions of a person's psychology, Winnicott at times used "self" to refer to
both. For Winnicott, the self is a very important part of mental and emotional well-
being which plays a vital role in creativity. He thought that people were born without
a clearly developed self and had to "search" for an authentic sense of self as they
grew. [40] "For Winnicott, the sense of feeling real, feeling in touch with others and with
one's own body and its processes was essential for living a life." [41]
True self
"Only the true self can be creative and only the true self can feel real." [42] For
Winnicott, the True Self is a sense of being alive and real in one's mind and body,
having feelings that are spontaneous and unforced. This experience of aliveness is
what allows people to be genuinely close to others, and to be creative.
Winnicott thought that the "True Self" begins to develop in infancy, in the
relationship between the baby and its primary caregiver (Winnicott typically refers to
this person as "the mother"). One of the ways the mother helps the baby develop an
authentic self is by responding in a welcoming and reassuring way to the baby's
spontaneous feelings, expressions, and initiatives. In this way the baby develops a
confidence that nothing bad happens when she expresses what she feels, so her
feelings don't seem dangerous or problematic to her, and she doesn't have to put
undue attention into controlling or avoiding them. She also gains a sense that she is
real, that she exists and her feelings and actions have meaning.
Winnicott thought that one of the developmental hurdles for an infant to get past is the
risk of being traumatised by having to be too aware too soon of how small and
helpless she really is. A baby who is too aware of real-world dangers will be too
anxious to learn optimally. A good-enough parent is well enough attuned and
responsive to protect the baby with an illusion of omnipotence, or being all-powerful.
For example, a well-cared-for baby usually doesn't feel hungry for very long before
being fed. Winnicott thought the parents' quick response of feeding the baby gives the
baby a sense that whenever she's hungry, food appears as if by magic, as if the baby
herself makes food appear just by being hungry. To feel this powerful, Winnicott
thought, allowed a baby to feel confident, calm and curious, and able to learn without
having to invest a lot of energy into defences. [43]
False self
In Winnicott's writing, the "False Self" is a defence, a kind of mask of behaviour that
complies with others' expectations. Winnicott thought that in health, a False Self was
what allowed one to present a "polite and mannered attitude" [44] in public.
But he saw more serious emotional problems in patients who seemed unable to feel
spontaneous, alive or real to themselves anywhere, in any part of their lives, yet
managed to put on a successful "show of being real". Such patients suffered inwardly
from a sense of being empty, dead or "phoney". [45]
Winnicott thought that this more extreme kind of False Self began to develop in
infancy, as a defence against an environment that felt unsafe or overwhelming
because of a lack of reasonably attuned caregiving. He thought that parents did not
need to be perfectly attuned, but just "ordinarily devoted" or "good enough" to protect
the baby from often experiencing overwhelming extremes of discomfort and distress,
emotional or physical. But babies who lack this kind of external protection, Winnicott
thought, had to do their best with their own crude defences. [46]
One of the main defences Winnicott thought a baby could resort to was what he called
"compliance", or behaviour motivated by a desire to please others rather than
spontaneously express one's own feelings and ideas. For example, if a baby's
caregiver was severely depressed, the baby would anxiously sense a lack of
responsiveness, would not be able to enjoy an illusion of omnipotence, and might
instead focus his energies and attentions on finding ways to get a positive response
from the distracted and unhappy caregiver by being a "good baby". The "False Self" is
a defence of constantly seeking to anticipate others' demands and complying with
them, as a way of protecting the "True Self" from a world that is felt to be unsafe.
Winnicott thought that the "False Self" developed through a process of introjection (a
concept developed early on by Freud) or internalising one's experience of others.
Instead of basing his personality on his own unforced feelings, thoughts, and
initiatives, the person with a "False Self" disorder would essentially be imitating and
internalising other people's behaviour – a mode in which he could outwardly come to
seem "just like" his mother, father, brother, nurse, or whoever had dominated his
world, but inwardly he would feel bored, empty, dead, or "phoney". Winnicott saw
this as an unconscious process: not only others but also the person himself would
mistake his False Self for his real personality. But even with the appearance of
success, and of social gains, he would feel unreal and lack the sense of really being
alive or happy.
The division of the True and False self roughly develops from Freud's (1923)
notion of the Superego which compels the Ego to modify and inhibit libidinal Id
impulses, possibly leading to excessive repression but certainly altering the way
the environment is perceived and responded to. However it is not a close
equation as the Id, Ego and Superego are complex and dynamic inter-related
systems that do not fit well into such a dichotomy. The theory more closely
resembles Carl Rogers' simplified notions of the Real and Ideal self. According
to Winnicott, in every person the extent of division between True and False Self
can be placed on a continuum between the healthy and the pathological. The
True Self, which in health gives the person a sense of being alive, real, and
creative, will always be in part or in whole hidden; the False Self is a compliant
adaptation to the environment, but in health it does not dominate the person's
internal life or block him from feeling spontaneous feelings, even if he chooses
not to express them. The healthy False Self feels that it is still being true to the
True Self. It can be compliant to expectations but without feeling that it has
betrayed its "True Self".
Winnicott on Carl Jung
Main article: Carl Jung
Winnicott's assessment of the other great pioneer of psychoanalysis, Carl Jung,
appeared when he published an extensive review of Jung's partially autobiographical
work, Memories, Dreams, Reflections. [47] In it Winnicott focuses on the first three
chapters of the work that:
every psychoanalyst must read' and in particular the first chapter, 'First Years'.
Winnicott [48]
He discusses Jung's evident early experiences of psychotic illness from around the age
of four, from within his own theoretical framework. He goes on to comment on the
relationship between Freud and Jung. He also discusses the Jungian 'unconscious' and
Jung's concept of the 'self'. [48]
Criticism and influence
Winnicott's theoretical elusiveness has been linked to his efforts to modify Kleinian
views. [16] Yet whereas from a Kleinian standpoint, his repudiation of the concepts of
envy and the death drive were a resistant retreat from the harsh realities she had found
in infant life, he has also been accused of being too close to Klein, of sharing in her
regressive shift of focus away from the Oedipus complex to the pre-oedipal. [49][50][51][52]
The psychoanalyst, Jan Abram, a former director of the Squiggle Foundation,
intended to promote Winnicott's work, who therefore may be said to be partisan, has
proposed a coherent interpretation for the omission of Winnicott's theories from many
mainstream psychoanalytic trainings. His view of the environment and use of
accessible everyday language, addressing the parent community, as opposed to just
the Kleinian psychoanalytic community, may account in part for the distancing and
making him somewhat "niche". [53]
Winnicott has also been accused of identifying himself in his theoretical stance with
an idealised mother, in the tradition of mother (Madonna) and child. [54][55] Related is his
downplaying of the importance of the erotic in his work, as well as the
Wordsworthian Romanticism of his cult of childhood play (exaggerated still further in
some of his followers). [56][57]
His theories of the true/false self may have been over-influenced by his own
childhood experience of caring for a depressed mother, which resulted in the
development of a prematurely mature self which he was only subsequently able
to undo. [58][59]
Nevertheless, Winnicott remains one of the few twentieth-century analysts who, in
stature, breadth, minuteness of observations, and theoretical fertility can legitimately
be compared to Sigmund Freud. [60]
He has been a major influence for the American psychoanalyst Thomas Ogden, and
the Italian psychoanalysts Giuseppe Civitarese and Antonino Ferro, all of which have
cited Winnicott's interest in play as being central to their work. He has also strongly
influenced the work of Adam Phillips.
Along with Jacques Derrida, Winnicott is a fundamental resource for philosopher
Bernard Stiegler's What Makes Life Worth Living: On Pharmacology
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