Winnicott's theory of transitional objects in infant development

Winnicott

Critical Evaluation of Donald W. Winnicott's Psychoanalytic Approach and Theories

The Infant, the Mother, and 'Transitional Objects' in Early Childhood Development

In his distinctive and controversial approach to patient treatment, the 20th century British psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott (1896-1971) focused on the fundamental importance of the establishment of healthy initial 'object relationships' in infancy: first between mother and infant, and second between the infant and a 'transitional object' (e.g., a blanket, stuffed toy, doll, or something similar) of the child's own choosing. At that second early stage, the 'transitional object' serves as an emotional substitute for the mother herself, a sort of 'portable mother' to the child, at least in an emotional sense, and far more easily handled, moved, mutilated, or otherwise manually manipulated by the child. The transitional object, then, gives the developing infant similar, sometimes greater, emotional security than its first object, the mother or other primary caregiver (Winnicott Playing and Reality 1950, pp. 1-4).

Healthy psychological development of the human infant, then, has mainly to do with the infant's initial relationship to its mother. This object-relationship to its mother is, in the earliest months of the infant's life initially distinct from, from, but later integrally connected with, its healthy relationship to the later transitional object that substitutes, in a sense, for the mother (pp. 2-7). A child's typical transitional object of the sort Winnicott describes might be, for example, a blanket, a teddy bear, or something else chosen from available toys or other household items (p.4).

As Winnicott further states: "The pattern of transitional phenomena [between the infant's initial focus solely on the mother to its initial focus on the transitional objects] begins to show at about four to six to eight to twelve months" (Winnicott, Playing and Reality 1950, p.4). In other words, the time of transition from mother-only focus to external object focus varies greatly from child to child. However, a child's choice of a transitional object and that object's extreme importance to the child, are readily apparent. "The parent gets to know its value and carry it round when traveling. The mother lets it get dirty and even smelly, knowing that by washing it she introduces a break in continuity in the infant's experience, a break that may destroy the meaning and value of the object to the infant" (p.4).

Prior to the infant's transitional object stage, however, the mother must first have created, very early on, the illusion (Playing and Reality pp. 10-13) that her own breast or breast-substitute is a part of the infant's self, fostering the infant's (necessary) earliest, feelings of comfort, mixed with equally necessary early feelings of omnipotence, a stage of development key to the infant's ability to next move in a healthy way to transitional object attachment (pp. 11-15). The infant, according to Winnicott, develops (or does not develop) its internal sense of psychological well-being, based on its earliest relationships to external objects, first to the mother's the breast or breast-substitute (i.e., the nursing bottle). That first object, by providing the infant with food and comfort on demand, offers it an early sense of fusion and omnipotence. That early sense is, according to Winnicot, key to the infant's later ability to make healthy distinctions between itself and others (pp. 5-6).

Later in childhood, continued healthy psychological development of the child requires further separation from the transitional objects of earliest life, e.g., the blanket, the teddy bear, the pillow, or other much-cherished item. However, if early external attachment to the mother's breast (in the infant's own perceptions, the breast actually feels like an internal object: the mother's breast is experienced by the infant as a part of himself or herself, not as a separate object. Therefore, in the earliest months of life, according to Winnicott, the sensation that the mother's nurturing breast gives to the child is actually one of nurturing or comforting itself, not of being nurtured or comforted by someone or something else) is in some manner absent, interrupted, damaged, or compromised, the child will experience developmental difficulties in terms of healthy attachment to future entities that also represent "otherness" from the child: pets, siblings and other family members, schoolmates, teachers, strangers (Playing and Reality pp. 26-37).

As Winnicott further explains, in a developmentally healthy child, the fierce attachment to the transitional object of choice is eventually forgotten, as its importance is lessened through disuse exposure to other intermediate objects:

Its [the 'transitional object's] fate is to be gradually allowed to be decathected detached from], so that in the course of years it becomes not so much forgotten as relegated to limbo. By this I mean that in health the transitional object does not 'go inside' nor does the feeling about it necessarily undergo repression. It is not forgotten and it is not mourned. It loses meaning, and this is because the transitional phenomena have become diffused, have become spread out over the whole intermediate territory between 'inner psychic reality' and 'the external world as perceived by two persons in common' that is to say, over the whole cultural field"(p.5)

If the earliest attachment to the child's first external object, the mother, then, is a healthy one, the child's next attachment stage, to whatever sorts of early 'transitional objects' come next, will be of the sort that will allow the child, in good time, to healthily decathect from those early object attachments, in the same way, and through essentially the same psychological processes, that the earliest attachment to the mother is decathected.

The 'Good-enough Mother'

Winnicott's well-known phrase 'good-enough mother' means that, within a healthy mother-baby dyad, the core, interrelated, early developmental phenomena of mother-object relations and transitional object relations shall occur as a matter of course over a time period to be uniquely determined by this particular mother and child, without the mother's needing to "do" anything in particular, to act in ways other than she would act ordinarily, or to manipulate either her own attitudes and actions or the infant's environment. Her good-enough mother status will most certainly be the case, so long as she is ready, willing, and available to love and nurture her baby in the manner that comes naturally to her. The child of a good-enough mother, then, is bound to develop healthily: first in relationship to her; second in its relationships to transitional objects, and finally in its relationships to the outer world.

In Winnicott's view, new mothers of infants possess all of the instinctive knowledge necessary to be good-enough mothers, that is, they have a natural understanding of how best to care for their own babies, which cannot be taught and should not be tampered with, criticized, demeaned, or second-guessed - by childcare experts or any others. In fact, introducing doubt to a new mother about her good-enough mothering instincts can invite feelings of anxiety, and even, in a worst-case scenario, create enough of these within her, about her innate mothering abilities, to interfere with her own natural and instinctive ability to be a 'good-enough mother' to bring about the healthy development of her child. Within the whole of psychoanalysis, it would be difficult to identify theories besides Winnicott's less interventionist, and more fundamentally accepting, of the mother as good-enough, that is, perfectly adequate exactly as she is. For instance, as Winnicott tells new mothers in Winnicott on the Child (2002):

What you do and know, simply by virtue of the fact that you are the mother of an infant, is as far apart from what you know by learning as is the east from the west coast of England...Just as the professor who found out about the vitamins that prevent rickets really has something to teach you, so you really have something to teach him about the other kind of knowledge, which comes to you naturally"(p.19).

In that respect, Winnicott's same core philosophies: following a patient's lead; recognizing and respecting the instinctive knowledge of mothers, and encouraging new mothers to trust themselves (Winnicott on the Child 2002, pp. 19-20) all increase likelihood of a successful course of psychoanalytic treatment.

Casement (1991) notes, however, that while few psychoanalysts challenge this particular aspect of Winnicott's theory, in practice it is not always easy to achieve. In Learning from the Patient, he states:

Following the patient's lead has always been an important principle of psychoanalysis and analytic psychotherapy. but, in practice, there has been a tendency for some analysts to become inappropriately controlling through being dogmatic, which interferes with the analytic process. Learning to learn from the patient provides balance against this, helping to preserve the analytic space more clearly for the processes within it"(p.ix).

In his own practice Winnicott specialized in treating psychologically disturbed children, as well as their parents, and sought to give the parents, in the course of treatment, insight into their children's past developmental problems and how those were affecting the children now. Winnicott's patients included children who, for whatever reasons, had apparently experienced poor or inadequate early object relations to the mother (or other primary caregiver), and consequently with early and later transitional objects, leading to future adjustment difficulties and lingering issues of attachment and separation for the child (Playing and Reality 1950, pp. 6-25). Winnicott's clinical experiences in this capacity eventually gave him the raw materials "from which he subsequently built his psychoanalytic theories" (Donald Woods Winnicott 1876-1971-2000).

Illustrations and Case Studies

The manner in which Winnicott put his theories into psychoanalytic practice, in his clinical efforts to help developmentally disturbed children and their parents, is evident from various case studies and illustrations offered by Winnicott in Playing and Reality (1950). One such example involved a seven-year-old boy with an unusual attachment to string.

According to his parents, "...the boy had become obsessed with everything to do with string, and in fact whenever they went into a room they were liable to find that he had joined together chairs and tables; that they might find a cushion, for instance, with a chair joining it to the fireplace" (p. 17). The parents, Winnicott adds, were relieved to finally discuss their son's unusual obsession, especially since "...the boy's preoccupation with string was gradually developing a new feature, one that had worried them instead of causing them ordinary concern. He had recently tied a string round his sister's neck (the sister whose birth provided the first separation of this boy from his mother)"(p. 17).

Besides his parents, the family of this boy consisted of two sisters, an older one who was mentally retarded and attended a special school, and a younger sister, whose birth, when the boy was three years and three months of age, had caused his first separation from the mother when she left for hospital to give birth. That separation was followed by another from the mother, when the boy was three years and eleven months (this time, the mother was hospitalized for an operation. Yet another separation from the mother took place when the boy was four years nine months old, this time for two months while the mother, who suffered from serious depression, was treated for it in a mental hospital (Winnicott, Play and Reality 1950, p. 16).

Winnicott summarizes his treatment of this child and his string-obsession symptom in the following way:

explained to the mother that this boy was dealing with a fear of separation, attempting to deny separation by his use of string, as one would deny separation from a friend by using the telephone. She was sceptical [sic], but I told her... I should like her to open up the matter with the boy...developing the theme of separation according to the boy's response.

Moreover, from the moment that she had this conversation with him the string

Play ceased. There was no more joining of objects in the old way...she felt the most important separation to have been his loss of her when she was seriously depressed; it was not just her going away...but her lack of contact with him because of her complete preoccupation with other matters.

A year after she had had her first talk with the boy there was a return to playing with string and to joining together objects in the house. She was in fact due to go into hospital for an operation, and she said to him:'I can see from your playing with string that you are worried about my going away, but this time I shall only be away a few days, and I am having an operation that is not serious.' After this conversation, the new phase of playing with string ceased" (Play and Reality 1950 pp. 17-18).

Another case history discussed by Winnicott in Playing and Reality (1950), in a chapter on the early origins of creativity (pp.65-103), this one involving a successful middle-aged adult male (pp. 72-80) further reinforces the importance of healthy early object-relations with the mother early in life. In this instance, Winnicott explains how the male patient, who was not homosexual, nevertheless kept speaking about he himself having "penis envy" during his therapeutic session. The patient added that, though he knew he was in fact a man, what he pictured in his own mind right now was himself as a girl (yet still somehow himself) sitting where he sat now. He hesitated to bring up that which he was at present picturing in his mind, since he would be thought mad (p. 73).

To this Winnicott, using his theory of early object relations to glean the obscure roots of the patient's current dilemma, replied: "It was not that you told this to anyone; it was I who see the girl and hear a girl talking, when actually there is a man on my couch. The mad person is myself"(pp. 73-4).

As Winnicott further explains, "The patient said he now felt sane in a mad environment [Winnicott also comments about this state of mind, within this chapter of Play and Reality, as typical of those who experience creative mental states.] in other words, he was released from a dilemma. As he said subsequently, 'I myself could never say (knowing myself to be a man) "I am a girl." I am not mad that way. But you said it, and you have spoken to both parts of me."

Winnicott adds: "This madness which was mine [emphasis added] enabled him to see himself as a girl from my position. He knows himself to be a man and never doubts that he is a man" (p.74). Since this particular patient had been in therapy with Winnicott for some time, based on previous sessions Winnicott recalled that the patient's mother (he had been the second-born of two boys, and had previously told Winnicott that for her second child, his mother had hoped for a girl baby instead of another boy baby) had treated him, as a very young child, "as if she failed to see him as a male" (Winnicott). From that, the patient was able to see, with Winnicott's help, that: On the basis of this pattern he later arranged his defences, but it was his mother's 'madness' that saw a girl where there was a boy, and this was brought right into the present by my having said 'It is I who am mad'" (p. 74).

As Winnicott further recalls, the patient left the session feeling much better that day, having achieved some new clarity on the origins of his puzzling mental picture of himself as female, with Winnicott having created the conditions of possibility for that insight by claiming the patient's "madness" at picturing himself as a girl as not the patient's, but instead his own. The following week, however, when that same patient appeared in Winnicott's office for his usual session, he reported feeling ill with flu-like symptoms.

In the course of therapy that day. This patient also told Winnicott that he had had very pleasurable sexual intercourse with his wife on Saturday night, but that the following day, Sunday (today was Monday) he had began to feel ill with the flu-like symptoms that he still had today. According to Winnicott, the symptoms the patient was feeling were psychosomatic. As he explained to the patient: "The feeling ill is a protest from the female self, this girl [i.e., the madness of the mother at seeing a girl where there was a boy], because she has always hoped that the analysis would in fact find out that this man, yourself, is and always has been a girl (and 'being ill' is a pregenital pregnancy"(pp. 74-5.

In both of these case histories, Winnicott sheds concrete light on the early role of the object relationship to the mother in the formation of psychologically healthy (or unhealthy) adults. In the case of the boy obsessed with string, the uneasy separations from the mother experienced at ages three and four likely recalled for him past deprivations of the mother-object, perhaps even brought about by similar circumstances (e.g., the mother's depression) that led to her later separations from him when he was three and four years old. In the second instance, the faulty relationship of the mother of the mature patient, when an infant, that caused her to see him as a girl and not the boy he actually was, precipitated his later confusing and disconcerting image of himself, while in the analyst's office, as just that.

Conclusion

The psychoanalytic theories and clinical treatment methods of Donald Woods Winnicott derive fundamentally from Freud's theories of early childhood development, but focus more exclusively on early object relationship of the infant first to its mother and later to transitional objects in the course of a healthy developmental process. Winnicott's theory is controversial because he alone among psychoanalysts sees the early object relationships of infants as keys to their later mature well-being. The viability of Winnicott's theories is to a limited extent validated by the case histories he describes within Playing and Reality (1950), including, but not limited, two the two case histories described here.