Winnicott

As he got older he developed his own ideas in virtual disregard of the traditional languages of psychoanalysis.

it is the figure of the artist who embodies the drive for authenticity that is for Winnicott exemplary for that integrity of being he values above all else.

The act of interpretation, aside from its content, expresses collaborative concern; it comes out of identifying with the patient – being able, to some extent, to imagine what it is like to be that person at that moment – and then the more unexpected consequence of ‘believing in’ what he needs.

interpretation was a sophisticated extension of infant care, albeit a crucial part of the analyst’s primary aim in the treatment which was to establish and maintain an environment conducive to growth. The defining characteristic of the analytic setting for Winnicott was not exclusively verbal exchange.

verbal language, like other Transitional Phenomena, joins by separating and separates by joining the mother and her developing child.

‘On Influencing and Being Influenced’, 1941 34

‘An interpretation that does not work’, Winnicott writes in the Introduction to his Therapeutic Consultations in Child Psychiatry, ‘always means that I have made the interpretation at the wrong moment or in the wrong way, and I withdraw it unconditionally… Dogmatic interpretation leaves the child with only two alternatives, an acceptance of what I

The mother does not give the infant a feed, the infant gives the mother the opportunity to feed him. The clues provided by the patient facilitate the analyst’s capacity to interpret.

The creative originality that Winnicott considered to be an innate characteristic of infancy, realized through maternal care, could be muffled or felt to be lost.

Through brief, ‘economical’ interpretations – ‘I never use long sentences unless I am very tired”11 – he communicates to the patient that he is not a usurping presence.