Back to Table of Contents
the infant is able to use the object (mother) ‘ruthlessly’ without regard to the subjectivity of the object (mother). Healthy self-development is contingent upon the object-mother being able to ‘survive’ i.e. meet her infant’s needs in a ‘good enough’ fashion while maintaining her own subjectivity. In this manner the child is able to become aware of an ‘other’ who survives his aggression and exists out of his omnipotent control – this allows for the development of a self capable of true object-relating and empathy. If the mother’s own subjectivity interferes with her capacity to deal with her child’s aggression and still meet his needs, the resulting sense of frustration and fragmentation gives rise to a defensively constructed ‘false self’. In this scenario, the infant learns prematurely to adapt to his mother’s needs in order to survive. Thus, for Winnicott, the beginning is the mother-infant unity. “At first the individual is not the unit” (1952, p 221). From the infant’s perspective there is initially no differentiation between self and object. The infant is in a state of unintegration: “We postulate a primary unintegration” (1945, p 149) and completely dependent on the mother’s sensitive holding, a holding that is both physical and psychical. Through what Winnicott terms “primary maternal preoccupation” (1956) the “ordinary devoted mother” is in a state of heightened sensitivity towards her infant, which enables her to “adapt delicately and sensitively to the infant’s needs at the very beginning” (1956, p 302). This maternal holding creates for the infant the conditions for what Winnicott describes as ‘going-on-being’ (1960a), that is, the beginnings of a personal continuity which provides the foundations for the beginnings of a sense of self. This sense of self is primarily based on body experiences and body functions. If the mother’s holding is deficient – either through too long absences of holding or through intrusive impingements – the infant’s sense of continuity of being is broken and the infant is thrown into a state of unthinkable anxiety (falling forever, going to pieces, loosing all orientation) which the child instinctively reacts against with a premature, rigid “self-holding” (1962, p 58). This is an aspect of the “false self” (see below), which “hides and protects the core of the self” (ibid). The gradual move from unintegration to integration starts early through innate, natural processes in the infant, the mother’s holding and satisfactory drive experiences. Winnicott makes a distinction between “ego-relatedness” and “id-relatedness”. The first is related to the mother’s holding function, the other to the mother as the object of the infant’s drive impulses. The primitive self is ruthless. “We have to postulate an early ruthless object relationship” (1945, p 154). The change over from ‘pre-ruth’ to ‘ruth’ comes later and belongs to the development of the capacity of concern in the depressive position. In “Primitive Emotional Development” (1945) Winnicott writes: “I will try to describe in the simplest possible terms this phenomenon as I see it. In terms of baby and mother’s breast … the baby has instinctual urges and predatory ideas. The mother has a breast and the power to produce milk, and the idea that she would like to be attacked by a hungry baby. These two phenomena do not come into relation with each other till the mother and the child live an experience together … I think of the process as if two lines came from opposite directions, liable to come near each other. If they overlap there is a moment of illusion … ” (Winnicott, 1945, p 152)
754
Made with FlippingBook - professional solution for displaying marketing and sales documents online