Winnicott and Derrida: development of logic-of-play

In this essay I develop the logic of play from the writings of the British psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott and the French philosopher Jacques Derrida. The logic of play serves as both a conceptual framework for theoretical clinical thinking and a space of experiencing in which the therapeutic situation is located and to which it aspires. I argue that both Winnicott and Derrida proposed a playful turn in Western thinking by their attitude towards oppositions, viewing them not as complementary or contradictory, but as 'peacefully-coexisting'. Derrida criticizes the dichotomous structure of Western thought, proposing playful movement as an alternative that does not constitute itself as a mastering construction. I will show that Winnicott, too, proposes playful logic through which he thinks and acts in the therapeutic situation. The therapeutic encounter is understood as a playful space in which analyst and analysand continuously coexist, instead of facing each other as exclusionary oppositions. I therefore propose the logic of play as the basis for the therapeutic encounter. The playful turn, then, is crucial for the thought and praxis expressed by the concept of two-person psychology. I suggest the term playful psychoanalysis to characterize the present perspective of psychoanalysis in the light of the playful turn. I will first present Derrida's playful thought, go on to Winnicott's playful revolutionism, and conclude with an analysis of Winicott's clinical material in the light of the logic of play.     

From Enemy Combatant to Strange Bedfellow The Role of Religious Narratives in the Work of W. R. D. Fairbairn and D. W. Winnicott

Psychoanalysis has a well-documented history of antipathy toward religion. As a consequence of the postmodern shift in philosophy, however, there are those who, albeit cautiously, are attempting to approach religion with a renewed spirit of dialogue and inquiry as a narrative among many narratives that has informed and even enriched the development of psychoanalysis.

In this spirit of dialogue, the author traces the influence of early religious affiliations on two object relations theorists, W. R. D. Fairbairn and D. W. Winnicott. Fairbairn's early imbibing of Calvinist theology in Scotland and Winnicott's involvement in the Wesleyan church are detailed. The theological differences between these Protestant perspectives (which form counterpoints to one another) are clarified and the perspectives are positioned within the framework of British culture. These religious themes are then identified within the works of Fairbairn and Winnicott.

As a final consideration, the relational nature of the Judeo-Christian God, and the subsequent view of human life that flows from that theology, are posited as influential in the development of the relational shift in psychoanalysis. The author details the association between this shift and the seminal work of Fairbairn and Winnicott.     

In a bid to restate the culture-psyche problematic: revisiting The Essential Writings of Suhir Kakar

This book assembles a broad sweep of its author's writings in one volume. Sudhir Kakar is an erudite psychoanalyst who has written nearly fifteen previous books on various aspects of Indian psyche and culture. Most are concerned with alternative healing practices and traditions, aspects of Indian childhood, and the place of sexuality in Indian culture. Informed by psychohistory and influenced by Erikson's theory of identity and its psychosocial development within the life cycle of an individual in a given society, Kakar accurately articulates issues of identity and separation-individuation dynamics that operate within Indian psyche and culture. In discussing the subject book, the author of this essay applies a psychoanalytically focused approach, emphasizing the teachings of French psychoanalysis and the British object relations school in particular.     

D. W. Winnicott,transitional objects and the creation of the divine

Religious expressions and religious behaviours are often considered to be mainly mental or spiritual phenomena, to a large degree divorced from or threatened by physical or material forms that may accompany their expression. This paper asks whether the diminution of the material or the condemnation of idols, icons and religious art loses sight of possible benefits that involvement with these forms of material divinity has for believers. Using the concept of transitional objects and transitional phenomena developed by D. W. Winnicott, a mid-twentieth-century psychoanalyst, I argue that idols, icons and religious art often represent transitional objects that form psychological bridges, intermediaries or anticipated “transitions” from humans to unseen divinities who require materialisation in some form to be maintained actively in the believer’s mind. In the process of creating or designing these material forms, the forms themselves often come to be considered “divine”. Illustrations are provided.     

Further developments of the concept of fantasy

After the Isaacs' seminal work on the nature and function of unconscious phantasy (1948), several authors (mostly in the British Society) have reflected on the topic and tried to extend the concept of fantasy. In this paper I shall examine the contributions of Winnicott, Gaddini, Joseph and Anne Marie Sandler that aim at broadening this psychoanalytic concept. The authors that I have considered share a focus mostly on the early stages of child development. Both Winnicott and Gaddini belong to a line of thinking that explores the vicissitudes of the primary emotional development of the infantile self (in the mother‐infant relationship) involving the earliest processes of holding and bodily and kinaesthetic fantasy that form the bodily integrity of the person. The Sandlers focused mostly on the concept of the past unconscious understood as a place of primitive vicissitudes with a deficit in figuration where the process of repression is missing. The present unconscious phantasy (that is located in the here and now) has the function of rendering the past unconscious phantasy partly accessible; otherwise it would remain unknowable.     

The Time Before Us (The Unpast in W. S. Merwin,W. Benjamin,and V. Woolf)

Freud and Winnicott have expressed the opinion that if their psychoanalytic ideas are correct, then poets and writers will have thought of them first. The author of the present article, who, in a previous work, has developed the concept of “actual time” on metapsychological grounds, concurs with their opinion by showing that variants of “actual time” can be found in the works of the American poet W. S. Merwin, the British writer Virginia Woolf, and the German philosopher Walter Benjamin. Their poetry, literary prose, and philosophy, respectively, are shown to resonate with the time dimension of the psychoanalytic process.     

Early and deep: two independent paradigms?

Did Winnicott replace or transform Freud's metapsychology? The author's aim is to explore more deeply the views developed in a previous paper based solely on Winnicott. Here the author draws on other studies to respond to two questions recently posed by Fulgencio concerning the meaning of the term metapsychology and the existence of a new topography in Winnicott's work. For many authors, Winnicott does not reject Freudian metapsychology and says nothing new in this field; in the field of paediatric anthropology, however, he focuses on dependence, and in the field of the living embodiment of the drives on being and self as different from ego. But Green notes the existence of a third topography, that of self/object, and also examines the vicissitudes of being by isolating the concept in Winnicott's work. For the author, however, being seems in continuity with his whole anthropological and ontological perspective; and when Winnicott introduces environmental factors of which the infant is unaware, he also introduces a heuristic distinction between early and deep: there is thus neither a rejection nor a reformulatation of the metapsychological theorization, but rather a coexistence of two paradigms.     

The Paradox and Tragedy of Helplessness: Freud,Winnicott, and Religion

This article explores the works of Freud and Winnicott from the prism of the experience of helplessness in everyday life. Their theories provide a framework for and psychological insights into understanding the etiological sources and dynamics of non-traumatic helplessness. In addition, it is argued that Freud’s and Winnicott’s respective psychological theories manifest and were shaped by their own personal attitudes and responses toward experiences of helplessness, which, in turn, influenced their views regarding the role of religion in human life.     

Winnicott, Balint, and the Independent Tradition

This article compares and contrasts two main aspects of the work of Winnicott and Balint: their theories of infantile development and their theoretical and clinical work on the use of regression as a therapeutic agent. The relationship of their thinking to aspects of the British Independent Group's theories and clinical work is noted vis-à-vis the basic acceptance of classical theory and technique, acknowledgment and use of some of Klein's contributions, the influence of trauma and the external environment on psychic development and psychopathology, the importance of holding and the setting, and the reintegration of previously split off and lost parts of the self.     

On Becoming a British Psychoanalyst

This article describes a personal journey from social anthropology to psychoanalysis, first through training at the British Psychoanalytical Society from 1956 to 1964, then to becoming a Member and Training Analyst. I describe the development of a career involving the usual things a psychoanalyst is likely to do in addition to clinical practice: supervising students, participation in seminars and discussions with colleagues, teaching, writing, serving on various committees, being editor of a series of psychoanalytic books, and trips abroad to teach and to consult with colleagues about other points of view. This is the bare bones, but I also try to describe the development of some of my psychoanalytic views and attitudes, including a brief look at the British Society with an ex-anthropologist's eye.     

Infantile sexuality: Its place in the conceptual developments of Anna Freud and Donald W. Winnicott

This essay explores the place of infantile sexuality in the theories of Anna Freud and Donald W Winnicott. Both Anna Freud and D.W. Winnicott incorporated and at the same time changed the classical psychoanalytic account of infantile sexuality and the instinctual drives. Whilst Anna Freud remained closer to her father's original conceptualization, she developed a multidimensional model of development which gave the drives a foundational status whist also maintaining their significance in giving meaning and texture to children's subjective experience. Winnicott also retained much of S. Freud's original theorizing except that in a fundamental way he turned it on its head when considering earliest development. For him the establishment of the self was paramount, and the drives and infantile sexuality merely served to give substance to that self.     

The Development of a Personal View of the Psychoanalytic Field

This paper summarizes the development of my professional identity as psychoanalyst and psychiatrist. It describes the influences on my dedication to the study of severe personality disorders, namely, the training experiences I had under the guidance of Ignacio Matte-Blanco, in Chile; the research team of Jerome Franck at Johns Hopkins; the work in the Psychotherapy Research Project of the Menninger Foundation under Robert Wallerstein, my personal working relationship in New York, with Edith Jacobson, Margaret Mahler, the introduction to British Psychoanalysis by John Sutherland, and to French analysis in sabbatical times in Paris. I conclude by a brief overview of my theoretical orientation, combining ego psychological, object relations, and Kleinian approaches in the development of a synthesis that inspired my present research on the psychoanalytic psychotherapy of severe personality disorders.     

“淑女之争”与“君子协议”:回眸英国精神分析学会的“论战”

20世纪40年代,英国精神分析学会内部爆发一场影响全世界精神分析学发展的"战争"。以Anna Freud和Melanie Klein各自为首的精神分析师团体围绕潜意识幻想、本能与力比多以及精神分析培训与教学等一系列主题展开激烈争论,即历史上著名的"Freud-Klein论战"。这场"论战"就精神分析培训问题达成协议,并直接导致克莱因学派、维也纳学派和独立学派三"组"鼎立的英国精神分析时局。"论战"促使了客体关系精神分析与自我心理学的分离,推动了精神分析研究从驱力模式向关系模式的范式转变,奠定了后续精神分析运动发展的格局。     

Winnicott's response to Klein

The author suggests that, although Donald Winnicott presented some important criticisms of Melanie Klein's work, at times he tried to advance his perspectives too definitively without adequately considering her own. Because of this, he failed to acknowledge sufficiently that he was offering a model of human nature and development that could be revised. The fact that his differences with Klein arose in the context of a complex relationship in which each played numerous roles for the other, especially in the context of their affiliation with the British Psychoanalytical Society, periodically made it difficult for him to present his ideas more carefully and in his more characteristically open manner.     

Winnicott and Lacan: a missed encounter?

Winnicott was able to say that Lacan's paper on the mirror stage "had certainly influenced" him, while Lacan argued that he found his object a in Winnicott's transitional object. By following the development of their personal relations, as well as of their theoretical discussions, it is possible to argue that this was a missed encounter--yet a happily missed one, since the misunderstandings of their theoretical exchanges allowed each of them to clarify concepts otherwise difficult to discern.     

Contributors

Abstract

This paper studies the interaction of the clinical theories of two major British theorists, Melanie Klein and Donald Winnicott. Through three clinical examples, we see how the “Klein-Winnicott dialectic” operates in a significantly developmental fashion to advance and fulfill clinical work. Winnicott’s “object survival” is looked at in developmental conjunction with Klein’s “mourning” as a primary clinical and developmental process. This interaction also captures the essence of working with the aggression of a self that has been traumatically disrupted within its early development. This paper demonstrates how such work leads to the assimilation and grieving of primal object loss, evolving into a “developmental mourning process.” This developmental mourning includes the working-through of an “abandonment depression” in the character-disordered patient. A clinical example in a 1989 essay on “psychic pain” by Betty Joseph is used to set up the clinical challenge of going beyond the symptomatic clinging behavior of developmental arrest, into full psychic birth as a separate other, an Other who can relate to an Other. Conclusively, the subjective visceral affect noted and monitored in its clinical dimensions here is that of human “heartache,” which can also include regret.     

精神分析客体关系革命的折衷进路:英国独立学派评述

自精神分析学诞生以来,其发展进路经历了自我革命、客体关系革命、自体革命、关系革命和神经科学革命。英国独立学派是客体关系革命的主要发起者和中间力量,它诞生于20世纪40年代英国精神分析学会内部的“论战”,并在规模以及精神分析理论和技术方面都取得重大发展。独立学派的精神分析师以开放和折衷的态度批判性地汲取各种现存的精神分析观点,形成不同于克莱因学派的客体关系思想,并表现出独立性、开放性、关系性和真实性的内涵与特征。温尼科特、费尔贝恩和巴林特是独立学派的主要代表人物,他们各自建构出独特的客体关系理论,促使精神分析范式从一元驱力模式转向二元客体关系模式,推动了客体关系理论的深入发展,奠定了后续精神分析发展的基石。     

Prayer as Therapeutic Process Toward Transforming Destructiveness Within a Spiritual Direction Relationship

This article will expand previous conceptualizations (Kuchan, Presence Int J Spiritual Dir 12(4):22–34, 2006; J Religion Health 47(2):263–275, 2008; J Pastoral Care Counsel, forthcoming) of what might be occurring during a prayer practice that creates space within a spiritual direction relationship for the creation of inner images that reveal a person’s unconscious relational longings and co-created representations of God that seem to facilitate therapeutic process toward aliveness. In previous articles, I suggest one way to understand the prayer experience is through a lens of Winnicottian notions of transitional space, illusion, and co-creation of God images. This article expands on these ideas to include an understanding of God as Objective Other (Lewis, The four loves, 1960) interacting with a part of a person’s self (Jung, in: The structure and dynamics of the psyche, collected works 8, 1934; Symington, Narcissism, a new theory, 1993) that has capacity for subjectivity (Benjamin, Like subjects, love objects: Essays on recognition and sexual difference, 1995) and co-creation (Winnicott, Home is where we start from: Essays by a psychoanalyst, 1990), of inner representations of God (Ulanov, Winnicott, god and psychic reality, 2001). I also expand on a notion of God as “Source of aliveness” by integrating an aspect of how Symington (Narcissism, a new theory, 1993) thinks about “the lifegiver,” which he understands to be a mental object. After offering this theoretical expansion of the prayer practice/experience, one woman’s inner representations of self and God are reflected upon in terms of a therapeutic process toward transforming destructiveness, utilizing ideas from Winnicott, Kohut, and Benjamin.     

The effects of mood upon imaginal thought.t.

The effects of mood upon imaginal thought were explored with a highly trained undergraduate female hypnotic subject. She was hypnotically programmed to experience free-floating anxiety or pleasure in varying degrees just before the exposure of combinations of three Blacky Pictures, and to produce dreamlike imagery in response to the Blacky stimuli while under sway of the mood. Data from 98 dream trials, separated by amnesia, indicated that the affective states clearly influenced imaginal processes. Blind ratings by a psychoanalyst showed anxiety moods to be more closely associated with primary-process features characteristic of nocturnal dreams, whereas pleasure had a relatively higher incidence of daydreamlike ratings. Empirical analysis of themes yielded significant relationships of anxiety to physical injury to the self and verbal aggression toward others; pleasure was associated with circular movements and overt sex themes.