52 Facts About Donald Winnicott

Donald Woods Winnicott was an English paediatrician and psychoanalyst who was especially influential in the field of object relations theory and developmental psychology.

Donald Winnicott was a leading member of the British Independent Group of the British Psychoanalytical Society, President of the British Psychoanalytical Society twice, and a close associate of British writer and psychoanalyst Marion Milner.

Donald Winnicott wrote several books, including Playing and Reality, and over 200 papers.

Donald Winnicott was born on 7 April 1896 in Plymouth, Devon, to Sir John Frederick Donald Winnicott and Elizabeth Martha, daughter of chemist and druggist William Woods, of Plymouth.

Sir John Donald Winnicott was a partner in the family firm, in business as hardware merchants and manufacturers, and was knighted in 1924 having served twice as mayor of Plymouth; he was a magistrate and alderman.

The family was prosperous and ostensibly happy, but behind the veneer, Donald Winnicott saw himself as oppressed by his mother, who tended toward depression, as well as by his two sisters and his nanny.

Donald Winnicott described himself as a disturbed adolescent, reacting against his own self-restraining "goodness" acquired from trying to assuage the dark moods of his mother.

Donald Winnicott first thought of studying medicine while at The Leys School, a boarding school in Cambridge, after fracturing his clavicle and recording in his diary that he wished he could treat himself.

Donald Winnicott began pre-clinical studies in biology, physiology and anatomy at Jesus College, Cambridge, in 1914 but, with the onset of World War I, his studies were interrupted when he was made a medical trainee at the temporary hospital in Cambridge.

Donald Winnicott was a potter and they married on 7 July 1923 in St Mary's Church, Frensham.

Alice had "severe psychological difficulties" and Donald Winnicott arranged for her and his own therapy to address the difficulties this condition created.

Donald Winnicott obtained a post as physician at the Paddington Green Children's Hospital in London, where he was to work as a paediatrician and child psychoanalyst for 40 years.

Donald Winnicott rose to prominence as a psychoanalyst just as the followers of Anna Freud were in conflict with those of Melanie Klein for the right to be called Sigmund Freud's "true intellectual heirs".

Donald Winnicott was lecturing after the war and Janet Quigley and Isa Benzie of the BBC asked him to give over sixty talks on the radio between 1943 and 1966.

Donald Winnicott divorced his first wife in 1949 and married Clare Britton in 1951.

Except for one book published in 1931, all of Donald Winnicott's books were published after 1944, including The Ordinary Devoted Mother and Her Baby, The Child and the Family, Playing and Reality, and Holding and Interpretation: Fragment of an Analysis.

Donald Winnicott died on 25 January 1971, following the last of a series of heart attacks and was cremated in London.

Clare Donald Winnicott oversaw the posthumous publication of several of his works.

Donald Winnicott claimed that "the foundations of health are laid down by the ordinary mother in her ordinary loving care of her own baby", central to which was the mother's attentive holding of her child.

Donald Winnicott considered that the "mother's technique of holding, of bathing, of feeding, everything she did for the baby, added up to the child's first idea of the mother", as well as fostering the ability to experience the body as the place wherein one securely lives.

Extrapolating the concept of holding from mother to family and the outside world, Donald Winnicott saw as key to healthy development "the continuation of reliable holding in terms of the ever-widening circle of family and school and social life".

Donald Winnicott introduced the concepts of transitional objects and transitional phenomena in his 1951 paper "Transitional Objects and Transitional Phenomena" and later elaborated on these ideas in his book Playing and Reality These concepts are among his most enduring and widely influential contributions to developmental psychology and psychoanalytic theory.

Donald Winnicott saw the transitional object as the first "not-me" possession, enabling the child to navigate between inner psychic reality and external shared reality.

Donald Winnicott emphasised that the transitional object is not the mother substitute but represents the infant's transition from a state of being merged with the mother to a state of being in relation to the mother as something outside and separate.

Donald Winnicott considered this space vital to the individual, as it forms the foundation where creative living and cultural experience take place.

The delinquent child, Donald Winnicott thought, was looking for a sense of secure holding lacking in their family of origin from society at large.

Donald Winnicott advocated providing a reliable, containing environment that could recognize the "cry for help" fuelled by a sense of loss of integrity, when the familial holding environment was inadequate or ruptured within antisocial behavior.

In residential settings like the Paddington Green Children's Hospital where he worked for decades, Donald Winnicott emphasized that staff must "survive" the challenging behaviors without retaliating vindictively, thereby giving children the opportunity to develop trust and more adaptive ways of relating.

In contrast to the emphasis in orthodox psychoanalysis upon generating insight into unconscious processes, Donald Winnicott considered that playing was the key to emotional and psychological well-being.

Donald Winnicott thought that insight in psychoanalysis was helpful when it came to the patient as a playful experience of creative, genuine discovery; dangerous when patients were pressured to comply with their analyst's authoritative interpretations, thus potentially merely reinforcing a patient's false self.

Donald Winnicott believed that it was only in playing that people are entirely their true selves, so it followed that for psychoanalysis to be effective, it needed to serve as a mode of playing.

Two of the techniques whereby Donald Winnicott used play in his work with children were the squiggle game and the spatula game.

The second, more famous instance involved Donald Winnicott placing a spatula within the child's reach for him to play with.

Many of Donald Winnicott's writings show his efforts to understand what helps people to be able to play, and on the other hand what blocks some people from playing.

Donald Winnicott pointed out that no one demands that a toddler explain whether his Binky is a "real bear" or a creation of the child's own imagination, and went on to argue that it is very important that the child is allowed to experience the Binky as being in an undefined, "transitional" status between the child's imagination and the real world outside the child.

Donald Winnicott meant that, while philosophical and psychoanalytic ideas about the self could be very complex and arcane, with a great deal of specialised jargon, there was a pragmatic usefulness to the ordinary word "self" with its range of traditional meanings.

For Donald Winnicott, the self is a very important part of mental and emotional well-being which plays a vital role in creativity.

Donald Winnicott thought that people were born without a clearly developed self and had to "search" for an authentic sense of self as they grew.

Donald Winnicott believed one of the developmental hurdles for an infant to pass is the risk of being traumatised by being too aware too soon of how small and helpless they really are.

Donald Winnicott thought the parents' quick response of feeding the baby gives the baby a sense that whenever she's hungry, food appears as if by magic, as if the baby herself makes food appear just by being hungry.

In Donald Winnicott's writing, the "False Self" is a defence, a kind of mask of behaviour that complies with others' expectations.

Donald Winnicott thought that in health, a False Self was what allowed one to present a "polite and mannered attitude" in public.

Donald Winnicott thought that this more extreme kind of False Self began to develop in infancy, as a defence against an environment that felt unsafe or overwhelming because of a lack of reasonably attuned caregiving.

Donald Winnicott thought that parents did not need to be perfectly attuned, but just "ordinarily devoted" or "good enough" to protect the baby from often experiencing overwhelming extremes of discomfort and distress, emotional or physical.

One of the main defences Donald Winnicott thought a baby could resort to was what he called "compliance", or behaviour motivated by a desire to please others rather than spontaneously express one's own feelings and ideas.

Donald Winnicott thought that the "False Self" developed through a process of introjection or internalising one's experience of others.

Donald Winnicott saw this as an unconscious process: not only others but the person himself would mistake his False Self for his real personality.

Donald Winnicott discusses Jung's evident early experiences of psychotic illness from around the age of four, from within his own theoretical framework.

Donald Winnicott goes on to comment on the relationship between Freud and Jung.

Donald Winnicott discusses the Jungian 'unconscious' and Jung's concept of the 'self'.

Donald Winnicott has been accused of identifying himself in his theoretical stance with an idealised mother, in the tradition of mother and child.

Nevertheless, Donald Winnicott remains one of the few twentieth-century analysts who, in stature, breadth, minuteness of observations, and theoretical fertility can legitimately be compared to Sigmund Freud.