Sublime

And it is what the child uses the object to do – here convey him safely from waking to sleeping – that interests Winnicott, not the specific nature of the object. And this idea could, of course, be extended to the analytic situation; in understanding the patient’s transference at any given moment in the treatment the analyst might ask himself not o

What was the analyst’s desire vis à vis the patient, what was the analyst using the patient for, how did the patient figure in the analyst’s own developmental project?

Winnicott places especial emphasis on reliability as a way of protecting the other from unpredictability

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.

‘The erotic experiences can be completed while the object is subjectively conceived or personally created’;33 the hungry infant fantasizes a satisfying object which by its timely arrival appears to belong to him as his own creation. But it is through the aggressive component, Winnicott suggests, that the infant establishes the existence of a separa

2. The True Self is the source of what is authentic in a person. ‘Only the True Self can be creative,’ Winnicott insists, ‘and only the True Self can feel real.’

facilitating object.

From the very beginning Winnicott would represent himself as less knowing than Klein as an analyst; and he would stress the importance, as an analyst, of being able to tolerate not-knowing.