Playing and Reality

"Donald Winnicott can be seen in a sense to link the points of view the two women represented, and of all these pioneers he is perhaps best known today, with catchphrases such as ‘the good enough mother’ being in general currency. While there may sometimes be a misperception around about his being too ‘fluffy’ and ignoring of aggression, this was the man who wrote the paper ‘Hate in the Counter-Transference’, following his experiences of giving shelter to a disturbed adolescent during the war years. How much weight do you give to the personality of each child? How much is to do with the environment and the impact of experience? Winnicott worked with Klein when she was researching and writing about the importance of primary splitting in the early infant mind: that at the beginning the baby needs to have a very strong sense of what feels ‘bad’ – the ‘bad object’ – and what feels ‘good’ – the ‘good object’. He gained a huge amount of understanding through her theory and technique, but more and more realised the paramount importance of the early environment, and his developing views, based on many years of work as a pediatrician, meant that the two drifted apart. He was in a real sense ‘the people’s psychoanalyst’, and he gave countless radio broadcasts, talks and interviews as well as writing academic papers. One of Winnicott’s other well-known sayings remains ‘there’s no such thing as a baby; only a baby with someone’ – in other words, the personality unfolds, grows and matures in relationship, first with the primary caretaker and immediate family, and then this template forms the basis for future relationships. So, far from being, as some popular thinking would have it, antithetical to a Kleinian object relations perspective, the two pioneers (pace Klein) are complementary, as Klein always maintained that the baby is person-related from birth. Both of these views have been amply confirmed by subsequent infant development researchers, who have charted both in the laboratory and in the home the micro-analytic ‘dance’ which occurs between mothers and infants. These actually show us, with film and video, the very beginnings of the development of the personality which is a two-person concern from the start, indicating the complementarity of Winnicottian and Kleinian views. Support Five Books Five Books interviews are expensive to produce. If you're enjoying this interview, please support us by donating a small amount . Winnicott’s Playing and Reality, not published till after his death, is a fine and illuminating collection of his major thinking, important not only because of the work with children (just pick any page and there is something to ponder, such as the therapeutic use of string, for instance, or why a teddy bear may be alternately loved and abused by its child owner) but because of the way he shows how the ‘transitional space’ which develops as the baby separates from the primary caretaker will later become ‘the location for cultural experience’. This is the space where creativity flowers in adult life, and he makes a convincing and heartfelt case for this adult play to be respected in all its aspects ‘for we are poor indeed if we are only sane’."