Sublime

It’s very touching that we live in a world where we have learned to be so kind to children; it would be even nicer if we learned to be a little more generous towards the childlike parts of one another. It sounds strange at first – and even condescending or despairing – to keep in mind that in crucial ways one’s partner always remains a child. On th

This ‘aggressive potential’ that is not referred to as an instinct is tantamount, in Winnicott’s writing of this period, to a developmental potential. ‘Aggression’, he writes elsewhere, ‘is seen more as evidence of life.’22 But it has to be included, ‘fused in’, with the infant’s capacity for instinctual relationship that he equates with the ‘eroti

The mother makes what is in fact a dialogue between her and her infant appear to him as a monologue born of his desire. By virtue of the mother’s adaptation, as we have seen, there is an area of illusion; it is as though, from the infant’s point of view, he creates in fantasy the mother he needs and finds. The infant, in Winnicott’s account, discov

For Winnicott health would always be characterized by spontaneity and intuition, ideas which barely figure in Freud or Klein. And he would particularly value ‘the feelings of those who do not much like thinking things out. They act best on intuition.’41

Spontaneity and intuition, of course, cannot be calculated. They are beyond anticipation. To Winnicott, despite the emphasis throughout his work on dependence, any theoretical allegiance ran the risk of becoming a compliant act, of pre-empting the personal and the unexpected. ‘It is not possible to be original,’ he wrote in Playing and Reality, ‘ex

Winnicott had the psychoanalytic virtues of his scientific vices: he did not become systematically coherent at the cost of his own inventiveness.

Built into our human brains from birth is an intense need for attention and understanding from our parents.

letting the baby find and come to terms with the object.’