Withdrawal and Regression

This paper gives an account of the analysis of a patient who did not actually become clinically regressed, but for whom regressions were localized in momentary withdrawal states which occurred in the analytic sessions. Winnicott states that during these moments of withdrawal unexpected things happen which the patient is sometimes able to report. If the analyst can hold the patient as soon as the withdrawn state appears, then the withdrawal state becomes a regression. Unlike a regression the withdrawn state is not profitable and when the patient recovers from a withdrawn state he or she is not changed. Winnicott further proposes that whenever we understand a patient in a deep way and show that we do so by a correct and well-timed interpretation we are holding the patient, and taking part in a relationship in which the patient is in some degree regressed and dependent.

Letter to The Times

In this letter, Winnicott expresses his view of the need for the public to understand the work of approved schools and their importance to children whose problem behaviour requires both help and protection from public revenge.

Character Types: The Foolhardy and the Cautious

Winnicott’s notes on Balint’s paper. Winnicott discusses Balint’s premise that character patterns during thrill situations are related to the state of regression. Winnicott explores the effect of his own ideas of early infant development, and of dependence and independence on such patterning. He proposes that the tendency to manic-depressive swing certainly resembles the alternation of denial of dependence and exaggerated dependence (clinging) on not-me objects. Balint’s alternatives in this case both avoid the anxieties belonging to the establishment of the central i am state and the central ‘depression’ or concern, or sense of responsibility, belonging to the depressive position.

Letter to Thomas Stapleton

This letter forms an exchange with his colleague Stapleton to canvass opinion for a memorandum on homosexuality from Paddington Green Hospital.

Review: Clinical Management of Behavior Disorders in Children

In this review, Winnicott praises the Bakwins for their efforts to link the work of paediatricians and child psychiatrists, but he finds that their book lacks a comprehensive psychological theory.

Letter to The Times

In this letter, Winnicott expresses his loathing of the coming of sponsored television and the presence of adverts that give the advertisers the right to intrude, and he says he will never forgive the politicians who are responsible for this step.

Letter to Sir David K. Henderson

In this letter, Winnicott agrees that a big demand for psycho-therapy should not lead to panic provision of half-trained psychotherapists. He wonders why Henderson’s reference to child psychiatry and paediatrics does not mention him and others who are well-known in Britain in this field, and states his belief that he represents a link between paediatrics and child psychiatry.

The Depressive Position in Normal Emotional Development

This paper is Winnicott’s account of the Depressive Position as a normal stage in the development of healthy infants, an achievement mostly belonging to the weaning age. It does not mean healthy infants pass through a stage of depression. Emotionally unhealthy, depersonalized babies lack the preconditions for this achievement. The mother holds the situation in time, so that the baby may experience ‘excited’ relationships and meet the consequences. Integration in the child’s mind of the split between the child-care environment and the exciting environment (the two aspects of mother) depends on good-enough mothering and the mother’s survival. The baby experiences this while the mother is holding the situation and the infant realizes that the ‘quiet’ mother was involved in the full tide of instinctual experience, and has survived. Instinctual experience brings anxiety and guilt but clinically children are sometimes without a sense of guilt, although they can go on to develop it. In the inner world of the individual who has achieved the depressive position there is on balance a reduced depressive mood and their reaction to loss is grief, or sadness. Where there is some degree of failure at the depressive position the result of loss is depression. The child who has reached the depressive position can get on with the problem of triangular interpersonal relationships: the classical Oedipus complex.

Letter to W. Clifford M. Scott

In this letter, Winnicott regrets the position he took on Scott’s paper at a recent scientific meeting and outlines his own difference from Klein on the achievement of the ‘depressive position’ in psychic development.

Letter to The Spectator

In this letter, Winnicott responds to an article by a specialist on leucotomy, disagreeing with the procedure and with its possible extension to use with all cases of mental disorder. He argues that life is difficult and suffering is inevitable and that this cannot be ‘cut out’ from patients.