Donald Woods Winnicott: biography and psychoanalytic legacy

Winnicott was one of the great referents of the post-Freud psychoanalytic current.

The mother-child relationship is the first relationship that the human being establishes and one of the most, if not the most, important for the development of the future man or woman. This bond, which begins to be forged during pregnancy, will mark the baby's pattern of interaction with the world and his or her understanding of reality, as well as the social and affective bond with others.

This type of relationships has been studied from different perspectives, such as psychoanalysis, being Donald Woods Winnicott one of the authors who focused his work on it. In this article we will make a brief review of the biography of this important author.

Winnicott's biography: his early years

Donald Woods Winnicott was born in Plymouth in 1896.. Son of Frederick Winnicott, merchant and politician who would come to obtain the consideration of sir and who would transmit to his son the importance of not being tied to dogmas, and of Elizabeth Martha Winnicott, he was the youngest and only boy of three brothers.

Winnicott began studying at the age of 14 at Leys College, Cambridge, and later enrolled at the University of Cambridge to study medicine. During the First World War he was conscripted and served as a surgeon. Once his service was over, he was able to finish his degree, specializing in the field of pediatrics. During his medical career, he already began to show an interest in Freudian psychoanalysis..

In 1923 he married Alice Taylor and joined the Paddington Green Children's Hospital where he worked for about forty years. That same year would begin to be analyzed by James Strachey as his career as a pediatrician while his career as a pediatrician was being consolidated.

Beginning of contact with Melanie Klein

Once the analysis with Strachey was over and he was interested in continuing his understanding and training in psychoanalysis and especially in its connection with children, Winnicott would receive the recommendation to contact Melanie Klein.

He began to train with the author, to whom he would propose that she also analyze him. Klein refused and would in turn propose that Winnicott analyze her son Eric, under her supervision. The end result was that Eric's analysis was accepted but without Klein's supervision. Thus began a somewhat convulsive relationship between Winnicott and Klein, who were torn between friendship and conflict. Winnicott also began to work with some patients.

Melanie Klein and Winnicott would diverge in several aspectsThe first two issues were the need or not to include the parents in the analysis (while for Winnicott it was essential for Klein it was not, due to the belief that the distress is due to the projection and introjection made by the child and that it has nothing to do with the real figure of the parent) or the importance of the provision of external stimulation.

Eventually a confrontation would arise within the psychoanalytic school of the time between the followers of Melanie Klein and those of Anna Freud, both of whom had a different view of psychoanalytic treatment, which, although it came from ancient times, resurfaced at this time in the London Psychoanalytic Society. In this conflict Donald Woods Winnicott would not take a position for either, establishing himself as an independent with ideas that brought him closer to both positions.

World War II and psychoanalytic development

During World War II Winnicott studied the effects of parental separation on children, also participating in programs to accommodate minors in shelters at the risk of in shelters in the face of the risk of bombing. He was also interested in the changes in children when they returned to their families.

Some time later he separated from his wife in 1949. In 1951 he would remarry Clare Britton, who would be analyzed by Klein after her previous therapist emigrated to Canada. They did not manage to establish a good relationship, the former considering that the latter was a bad analyst and the latter that Clare was too aggressive to be analyzed.

Donald Woods Winnicott also worked with psychotic patients.. The opposition of this author to treatments such as electroshock for these and other types of patients is also well known.

Throughout this time his work evolved, incorporating different concepts based on Klein's theory, Anna Freud's more orthodox postulates and pediatric practice. His contribution was of great importance in the development of psychoanalysis.

Winnicott died in 1971 of cardiac arrest.

Contributions to psychoanalysis

Throughout his career Winnicott would develop his own thinking of great relevance in the psychoanalytic field, based on various concepts from both Kleinian influence and more orthodox positions within the psychoanalytic work.

His work focused on the dyadic mother-child relationship, considering the father as a support for the child.considering the father as a support for the maintenance of the family nucleus. The mother is a fundamental figure in the psychological development of the child, and her emotional behavior will determine whether the baby can reach his true self by serving as an auxiliary self.

Another aspect that I would take into account is the holding or holding behavior of the mother towards the baby, which allows the baby to acquire security and to feel loved, allowing him to integrate the representation of himself and others.

I would establish that throughout development the human being goes through different phases in which there is at first an absolute dependence of the baby on the parents in which he is not able to contain his anguish, and from six months onwards he begins to be aware of the need for them and their care and to express his need, until finally he moves towards greater and greater independence.

A concept of great importance that Winnicott created is that of the transitional object as the one that allows the child to establish a beginning of differentiation between the self and the non-self and that allows them to reduce anxiety in the absence of the mother by providing them with narcissistic libido and object libido.. Also important are transitional phenomena such as babbling, phenomena and actions that the child does with the same purpose and that allow the progressive individuation and socialization.