THE “AS‐YET SITUATION” IN WINNICOTT'S “FRAGMENT OF AN ANALYSIS”: YOUR FATHER “NEVER DID YOU THE HONOR OF”… YET

The author proposes a new hypothesis in relation to Winnicott's “Fragment of an Analysis”: that as early as 1955, in the case described in this text, Winnicott is creating the paternal function in his patient's psychic functioning by implicitly linking his interpretations regarding the father to the Freudian concept of Nachträglichkeit. The author introduces an original clinical concept, the as‐yet situation, which she has observed in her own clinical work, as well as in Winnicott's analysis of the patient described in “Fragment of an Analysis” (1955).     

Transitional Relating and the Capacity for Play in Treatment

Based on an understanding of Winnicott's (1953/1975) notion of transitional relatedness and transitional phenomena as representing the use of play, illusion, and soothing capacities, I created a novel transitional object early memory probe that elicits a qualitative experience of current capacities for transitional relatedness. Working from a set of assumptions first articulated by Mayman (1968), early childhood memories are considered psychological reconstructions organized around unconscious object relations that are projected into the structure and content of early memories. It has been possible to assess patients' current capacities for transitional relatedness through the guise of past transitional object attachments. Two empirical studies (Fowler, Hilsenroth, & Handler, 1995, 1998) have demonstrated that greater levels of creative play and fantasy involved in the patient's memory productions are associated with the patient's greater capacity for transitional relatedness as evidenced by greater use of metaphor and use of the therapist as a soothing illusion. Thus, early memories are linked to self and other object relations structures, as well as to their expression in relationships--the prototypic transference relationships. This thesis, supported by empirical findings, is precisely what makes early memories so rich and revealing of patients' character structure, core conflicts, and potential transference enactments. Two clinical examples provided evidence for their use in complex treatments with adults.     

Fear of breakdown and the unlived life

Winnicott's Fear of breakdown is an unfinished work that requires that the reader be not only a reader, but also a writer of this work which often gestures toward meaning as opposed to presenting fully developed ideas. The author's understanding of the often confusing, sometimes opaque, argument of Winnicott's paper is as follows. In infancy there occurs a breakdown in the mother–infant tie that forces the infant to take on, by himself, emotional events that he is unable to manage. He short‐circuits his experience of primitive agony by generating defense organizations that are psychotic in nature, i.e. they substitute self‐created inner reality for external reality, thus foreclosing his actually experiencing critical life events. By not experiencing the breakdown of the mother–infant tie when it occurred in infancy, the individual creates a psychological state in which he lives in fear of a breakdown that has already happened, but which he did not experience. The author extends Winnicott's thinking by suggesting that the driving force of the patient's need to find the source of his fear is his feeling that parts of himself are missing and that he must find them if he is to become whole. What remains of his life feels to him like a life that is mostly an unlived life.     

Commentary on ‘The arms of the chimeras’ by Béatrice Ithier

In this Commentary I will first of all summarise my understanding of the proposal set out by Béatrice Ithier concerning her concept of the ‘chimera’. The main part of my essay will focus on Ithier's claim that her concept of the chimera could be described as a ‘mental squiggle’ because it corresponds to Winnicott's work illustrated in his book ‘Therapeutic Consultations’ (1971). At the core of Ithier's chimera is the notion of a traumatic link between analyst and patient, which is the reason she enlists the work of Winnicott. I will argue, however, that Ithier's claim is based on a misperception of the theory that underpins Winnicott's therapeutic consultations because, different from Ithier's clinical examples of work with traumatised patients, Winnicott is careful to select cases who are from an ‘average expectable environment’ i.e. a good enough family. Moreover, Winnicott does not refer to any traumatic affinity with his patients, or to experiencing a quasi‐hallucinatory state of mind during the course of the consultations. These aspects are not incorporated into his theory. In contrast (to the concept Ithier attempts to advance), Winnicott's squiggle game constitutes an application of psychoanalysis intended as a diagnostic consultation. In that sense Winnicott's therapeutic consultations are comparable with the ordinary everyday work between analyst and analysand in a psychoanalytic treatment. My Commentary concludes with a question concerning the distinction between the ordinary countertransference in working with patients who are thinking symbolically in contrast to an extraordinary countertransference that I suggest is more likely to arise with patients who are traumatised and thus functioning at a borderline or psychotic level.     

The loss of the transitional object - Some thoughts about transitional and ‘pre-transitional’ phenomena

This paper examines the use made of the transitional object in order to construct a coherent sense of self. Examples are cited from both Freud's and Winnicott's work about the use of an object to manage separations and extend a sense of self. Then some current case material is presented to make sense of the meaning of a patient's strong attachment to a negative transitional object in childhood. Its influence on her current state of mind and relationships is explored. A theoretical term, ‘the existential object’, is introduced to make sense of her use of objects. Contemporary thinking about the loss of the mother in early childhood and its influence on the sense of self is explored with reference to Andre Green's work, which is then related to Freud's and Winnicott's earlier thinking on the subject.     

Creating New Ways of Being and Relating

The therapeutic action of psychoanalysis has been broadened beyond interpretation to the creation of new ways of being and relating. The concept of analysis as including both understanding and creation is rooted in two major analytic traditions: the British Independent school and the relational movement. It is proposed that central concepts from each tradition can be combined to form a theory of technique that is focused creating new ways of being to replace the patient's historical patterns. The clinical strategy advocated here is aimed toward bringing dissociated self states to consciousness and then using the now conscious conflicting states to create new self-world relationship patterns. A theory of technique is suggested that combines the relational concepts of dissociated patterns of interaction with Winnicott's theory of potential space for the purpose of transforming latent psychic capacities into new forms of being. Specific criteria are proposed for identifying new potentially authentic ways of being, and a technique for facilitating their evolution from nascent dispositions to new ways of being is delineated. Two cases are used to illustrate how the technical strategy can be used to create ways of being from previously dormant psychic potential.     

CLINICAL WINNICOTT: TRAVELING A REVOLUTIONARY ROAD

The author contends that, contrary to the usual perception that Winnicott followed a linear progression “through pediatrics to psychoanalysis,” Winnicott's vision was always a psychoanalytic one, even during his early pediatric work. His place in the development of psychoanalytic theory is highlighted, and the author discusses such key Winnicottian concepts as transitional space, the false self, and the use of the object. Winnicott's unique approach to the form and value of analytic interpretation is particularly emphasized, and his thoughts on the treatment of depression are also addressed, as well as his distinction between regression and withdrawal. Included is a summary of convergences and divergences between Winnicott's thinking and that of Bion.     

Bakhtin and Winnicott on dialogue,self, and cure

This paper develops a Bakhtinian dialogical perspective on the psychoanalytic discourse in general and on the concepts of true and false selves (Winnicott, 1960b) in particular. Bakhtin's assumptions about the origins of dialogicality in children's development are compared to Winnicott's ideas about the origins of true‐ and false‐self processes. This comparison leads to a characterization of the false and true selves as different genres of the narrated self—the epic and the novel—each with its specific configurations of experience and temporality. Moreover, psychoanalysis is conceived as a unique phenomenon that centers on the internal and most of the time simultaneous dialogues that take place in each of the two participants. This perspective underscores the impact of the analyst's subjectivity on the analytic process as well as the multiplicity of the patient's and the analyst's selves. In this context, therapeutic change can be seen most of the time as a transformation of genre and not necessarily as a modification of contents. Free association allows for the transgression of the basic rules of narrativity, thus facilitating a generic shift. A dialogical relation between the openness of free association and narrativity's coherence is suggested.

Life by its very nature is dialogic. To live means to participate in dialogue [Bakhtin, 1963, p. 293].

A word like “self”; naturally knows more than we do [Winnicott, 1960a, p. 158].     

Searching for the enriching sense of otherness: The psychoanalytic psychotherapist as a meaning-bearing other

Abstract

This paper is a theoretical and clinical examination of the patient's search for the otherness of the therapist as a prerequisite for change and development in relational psychoanalytic psychotherapy. A basic assumption is that being in a relationship as well as being a personal self, is to be understood, as being with a “meaning-bearing other”; that is, someone who allows for the possibility of meaningful thoughts and feelings, either through an actual communicative presence or as a consciously, prereflective, or unconsciously imagined communication partner. The term “meaning-bearing other” is used to differentiate distinct, although often synchronic, modes of relatedness. The need for intersubjective “depth”—that is, to discover the otherness of the other, and for oneself to be recognized as an experiencing subject—is regarded as a main motivational force. Winnicott's, as well as Sullivan's developmental approaches, Mitchell and Aron's views on psychoanalytic interaction, and Heidegger and Gadamer's phenomenology and hermeneutics are used as theoretical points of reference for the present discourse. The theoretical points of view are examined and discussed through excerpts from twice-a-week psychotherapy with a six-year old girl.     

Peter and the renegade ‘It was Georgie I loved best’

This article contains reflections on my last conversation with Peter Lomas. As a consequence of this interchange, I consider Peter's inheritance of Sandor Ferenczi's therapeutic legacy. Some critics of the work of both practitioners insinuated that their ideas and practice amounted to a form of ‘wild analysis’: I examine this mistaken attribution and argue that the creativity inherent in their therapeutic ideas and practice was wrongly perceived as ‘wild analysis’. I consider Peter's misgivings in relation to Winnicott's ideas about regression in therapy, predicated on idealisation of the mother–baby relationship and entailing undue idealisation of the therapist–patient relationship without due attention being paid to the role of the father. I muse upon Peter's love of football, seeing it as a metaphor for the practice of psychotherapy.     

THE USE OF THE ANALYST AND THE SENSE OF BEING REAL: THE CLINICAL MEANING OF WINNICOTT'S “THE USE OF AN OBJECT”

“The Use of an Object and Relating through Identifications” (1968) represents Donald Winnicott's theoretical and clinical legacy. The author develops this concept from a clinical point of view, through the analysis of a woman with psychotic functioning. He reflects upon the dramatic quality of risks inherent in the processes linked to the use of the object with seriously disturbed patients. He explores different meanings of the analyst's survival, linking it to the analyst's response. The processes of the use of the object—that is, the encounter between the patient's potential destructiveness and the analyst's capacity to respond through his own judicious subjectivity—let the patient experience the analyst's capacity to keep his own subjectivity, authenticity, and creativity alive. It is starting from the traces of this live object that patients gradually form their own personal sense of being real.     

Exploration of the Unknown in a Safe-Enough Environment

This paper considers specific problem areas inherent in psychoanalytic approaches to therapy and suggests an approach of respect and concern that can serve as a starting point for psychoanalytically oriented social work. Particular focus is on Winnicott's notion of a "facilitating environment" and Bion's understanding of the therapist as "container" within the therapeutic context.     

Cocreated Idealization in the Winnicott/Khan Analysis: Commentary on Paper by Joyce Slochower

Joyce Slochower's paper applies relational thinking in a new conceptualization of idealization and denigration, which she sees as cocreated. Building on a thorough review of the analytic literature on the clinical experience of idealization, she suggests that idealization, helpful at first, often leads to therapeutic failure. She utilizes historical material about Donald Winnicott and his analyses of Masud Khan and Harry Guntrip to open a space for discussion of a previously unexplored topic, the idealization of the patient by the analyst. Slochower suggests that Winnicott's personal vulnerability to experiences of idealization contributed to failure in his analysis of Khan and to less severe problems in the Guntrip analysis. I focus on the Khan analysis and suggest that the problem was not the idealization, which may have been inevitable, but Winnicott's apparent failure to understand and make use of it. I also suggest that, with the very same understanding, the analytic community in general would benefit from thinking about the community's idealization of Winnicott.     

The paternal function in Winnicott: The psychoanalytical frame

My first aim has been to identify the implicit assumptions underlying Winnicott's detailed notes on a fragment of an analysis dating from 1955 and published after his death. The importance given by Winnicott to the father figure as early as 1955 is one of my discoveries; another is the deep Freudian roots of his thinking. In this essay I propose a new way of linking together the concepts of ‘paternal function’ and the ‘psychoanalytical frame’. Developing my hypothesis, I compare my reading of Winnicott and my way of reading José Bleger's study on the frame. Like Winnicott, I explore in detail a process of discovery, focusing on what the analyst and the patient are nor fully aware of …'as yet'. I am not proposing to unify Winnicott's and Bleger's thinking. My aim is to avoid the pitfall of eclecticism and, in so doing, to recognize both the related depths they sound in their thinking and their otherness. I want to share with the readers their ‘meeting’ in my mind.     

‘Though he slay me,yet will I trust in him’: a critical reconstruction of Winnicott's theory of value

This paper extrapolates an outline for a theory of value from Winnicott's reflections on war in ‘Discussion of war aims’ (1940). The author treats Winnicott's discussion as an occasion for a critical reconstruction of his theory of life‐values. He discerns an implicit set of distinctions in Winnicott's reflections on war, including different orders of value (existential, ethical, and psychosocial); a distinction between maturity and necessity; and a yet more fundamental distinction between violence and brutality. The paper argues, on the basis of these distinctions, that Winnicott allows for an understanding of one's encounter with the enemy as an ethical relation. The main argument of the paper is that the ethical attitude underpins recognition of the enemy's humanity. On a more critical note, the author argues that Winnicott doesn't adhere consistently to the ethical attitude he presupposes, that in certain passages he privileges the maturity of combatants over the humanity of the enemy.     

REVISITING DESTRUCTION IN “THE USE OF AN OBJECT”

“The Use of an Object” (1969a) has been widely recognized as among Winnicott's great papers and has deservedly received a good deal of attention. Much of that attention has focused on the importance that the paper gives to the role of destruction in bringing about the experience of externality. Yet the nature of that destruction has too often been assumed based on Winnicott's earlier writings. In the view that follows from that, destruction is equated with the aggression that fails to destroy the object, and the experience of externality is regarded just as the result of that failure. In offering a rereading of “The Use of an Object,” the author suggests that, while this aspect of aggression/destruction indeed plays an important role in the establishment of externality, it is only part of the story, and that the central contribution of “The Use of an Object” is Winnicott's attempt to offer a new theory of primitive destruction, one that provides an impulsive basis for separation/externality itself. This theory and Winnicott's ongoing attempts to develop it after “The Use of an Object” led him to rethink the very nature of the drives.     

The object beyond objects and the sacred

In both Freud's and Winnicott's thoughts regarding our psychological origin, there is the assumption of a given relationship which precedes all human relations. I refer to Freud's primal father and Winnicott's primary ideal object. I have chosen to call the object of this primordial relation “the object beyond objects” and to reflect on this as the psychological basis for an individual's faith in God. By examining what both these authors have to say concerning the sacred and the individual's way of relating to it, I feel that I am also able to describe maturation processes in the believer's relationship with God.     

FROM EXTENSION TO REVOLUTIONARY CHANGE IN CLINICAL PSYCHOANALYSIS: THE RADICAL INFLUENCE OF BION AND WINNICOTT

This paper addresses the radical departure of late Bion's and Winnicott's clinical ideas and practices from traditional psychoanalytic work, introducing a revolutionary change in clinical psychoanalysis. The profound significance and implications of their thinking are explored, and in particular Bion's conception of transformation in O and Winnicott's clinical‐technical revision of analytic work, with its emphasis on regression in the treatment of more disturbed patients. The author specifically connects the unknown and unknowable emotional reality‐O with unthinkable breakdown (Winnicott) and catastrophe (Bion). The author suggests that the revolutionary approach introduced by the clinical thinking of late Bion and Winnicott be termed quantum psychoanalysis. She thinks that this approach can coexist with classical psychoanalysis in the same way that classical physics coexists with quantum physics.     

WINNICOTT AND HELPLESSNESS: DEVELOPMENTAL THEORY,RELIGION, AND PERSONAL LIFE

The author examines Winnicott's theory of development from the perspective of existential helplessness, arguing that (a) his views illuminate healthy (and unhealthy) aspects of religion, and (b) express his stance toward the helplessness of dying and death. The author contends that Winnicott understood the infant's psychic growth in relation to the reality of existential helplessness and absolute dependency. Four interrelated, dynamic paradoxes embedded in Winnicott's developmental perspective are discussed, and these paradoxes are seen as frameworks to depict his notions of ego, transitional objects, and true/false selves. The author posits that religion, which Winnicott included under the rubric of transitional phenomena, can be understood in relation to existential helplessness and can be assessed in terms of the degree to which these paradoxes are dynamic.