Donald Winnicott Quotes

Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.

Tell me what you fear and I will tell you what has happened to you.

It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.

The most aggressive and therefore the most dangerous words in the languages of the world are to be found in the assertion I AM.

As the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott put it, “There is no such thing as a baby.” The development of our personalities doesn’t take place in isolation, but in relationship with others—we are shaped and completed by unseen, unremembered forces; namely, our parents.

What is a normal child like? Does he just eat and grow and smile sweetly? No, that is not what he is like. The normal child, if he has confidence in mother and father, pulls out all the stops. In the course of time, he tries out his power to disrupt, to destroy, to frighten, to wear down, to waste, to wangle, and to appropriate . . . At the start he absolutely needs to live in a circle of love and strength (with consequent tolerance) if he is not to be too fearful of his own thoughts and of his imaginings to make progress in his emotional development.

If a mother cannot meet her baby’s impulses and needs, [quoting Donald Winnicott] ‘the baby learns to become the mother’s idea of what the baby is.’ Having to discount its inner sensations, and trying to adjust it its caregiver’s needs, means the child perceives that ‘something is wrong’ with the way it is. Children who lack physical attunement are vulnerable to shutting down the direct feedback from their bodies, the seat of pleasure, purpose, and direction.

Donald Winnicott put it, “There is no such thing as a baby.” The development of our personalities doesn’t take place in isolation, but in relationship with others—we are shaped and completed by unseen, unremembered forces; namely, our parents.

This is beautifully illustrated in one of Donald Winnicott’s images: the mother gazes at the baby in her arms, and the baby gazes at his mother’s face and finds himself therein . . . provided that the mother is really looking at the unique, small, helpless being and not projecting her own expectations, fears, and plans for the child. In that case, the child would find not himself in his mother’s face, but rather the mother’s own projections. This child would remain without a mirror, and for the rest of his life would be seeking this mirror in vain.

Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide

It is joy to be hidden, but disaster not to be found.

The first time I visited the famed Tavistock Clinic in London I noticed a collection of black-and-white photographs of these great twentieth-century psychiatrists hanging on the wall going up the main staircase: John Bowlby, Wilfred Bion, Harry Guntrip, Ronald Fairbairn, and Donald Winnicott. Each of them, in his own way, had explored how our early experiences become prototypes for all our later connections with others, and how our most intimate sense of self is created in our minute-to-minute exchanges with our caregivers.

The most aggressive and therefore the most dangerous words in the languages of the world are to be found in the assertion I AM. It has to be admitted, however, that only those who have reached a stage at which they can make this assertion are really qualified as adult members of society.

It is a joy to be hidden but disaster not to be found.

The mother gazes at the baby in her arms, and the baby gazes at his mother's face and finds himself therein...provided that the mother is really looking at the unique, small, helpless being and not projecting her own expectations, fears, and plans for the child. In that case, the child would find not himself in his mother's face, but rather the mother's own projections. This child would remain without a mirror, and for the rest of his life would be seeking this mirror in vain.

before memory. We like to think of ourselves as emerging from this primordial fog with our characters fully formed, like Aphrodite rising perfect from the sea foam. But thanks to increasing research into the development of the brain, we know this is not the case. We are born with a brain half-formed—more like a muddy lump of clay than a divine Olympian. As the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott put it, “There is no such thing as a baby.” The development of our personalities doesn’t take place in isolation, but in relationship with others—we are shaped and completed by unseen, unremembered forces; namely, our parents.
This is frightening, for obvious reasons. Who knows what indignities we suffered, what torments and abuses, in this land before memory? Our character was formed without our even knowing it. In my case, I grew up feeling edgy, afraid; anxious. This anxiety seemed to predate my existence and exist independently of me. But I suspect it originated in my relationship with my father, around whom I was never safe.

As human beings, our earliest years reside in a land before memory. We like to think of ourselves as emerging from this primordial fog with our characters fully formed, like Aphrodite rising perfect from the sea foam. But thanks to increasing research into the development of the brain, we know this is not the case. We are born with a brain half-formed – more like a muddy lump of clay than a divine Olympian. As the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott put it: ‘There is no such thing as a baby.’ The development of our personalities doesn’t take place in isolation, but in relationship with another – we are shaped and completed by unseen, unremembered forces; namely our parents.

Nós, seres humanos, vivemos nossos primeiros anos num território anterior à memória. Costumamos pensar que surgimos dessa névoa primordial com o caráter plenamente formado, como Afrodite irrompendo perfeita da espuma do mar. Mas sabemos que não é exatamente assim, graças a pesquisas cada vez mais aprofundadas a respeito do desenvolvimento do cérebro. Nascemos com um cérebro formado apenas em parte, parecendo mais uma massa de argila disforme que um deus do Olimpo. Como dizia o psicanalista Donald Winnicott: “Não existe essa coisa de bebê.” O desenvolvimento da nossa personalidade não ocorre de maneira isolada, mas na relação com os outros — somos moldados e completados por forças invisíveis de que não nos recordamos; no caso, nossos pais.

Like a suspension in time, the protected space of a garden allows our inner world and the outer world to coexist free from the pressures of everyday life. Gardens in this sense offer us an in-between space which can be a meeting place for our innermost, dream-infused selves and the real physical world. This kind of blurring of boundaries is what Donald Winnicott called a “transitional” area of experience. Transitional processes allow us to imaginatively endow the world and feel part of something larger than ourselves. They are central to children’s play, and in adult life they play a role in the creative arts and in religion.

attachment theory, which predicts social competency and the ability to thrive as functions of nurturing early attachments, of bonding; and Erik Erikson, whose work suggests that the violation of the child’s trust leads to a life of increasingly perilous failures of trust; and D. W. Winnicott, the British pediatrician whose writings stress the importance of parental love, the ongoing connection between mother and child. All these authors describe the crucial role of touch, and of the family setting as a place of safety and security.

Whenever I hear about saintly parents, I get suspicious. It’s not that I’m looking for problems. It’s just that no parent is a saint. Most of us end up being the “good-enough” parents that Donald Winnicott, the influential English pediatrician and child psychiatrist, believed was sufficient to raise a well-adjusted child.

The psychiatrist Donald Winnicott conceptualized the true self as the source of one’s spontaneous and creative energies, the sort of which are abundant in children at play, but often repressed in adulthood. William James likewise envisioned the true self as “the palpitating inward life” (William James), while the psychotherapist Karen Horney described it as: “the alive, unique, personal center of ourselves; the only part that can, and wants to, grow.” (Karen Horney, Neurosis and Human Growth)

To ensure we don’t, like many individuals today, fall victim to dependence-driven relationships we must develop what the 20th century psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott called “the capacity to be alone”. When the fear of solitude makes us dependent on others, we become overly compliant out of a fear of abandonment, and thus build up what Winnicott called a False Self, that is, our personality becomes a mere reflex of how we believe others want us to be. It is in developing the capacity to be alone that the False Self can be broken down, thought Winnicott, rendering us able to rediscover our True Self, or in other words, our authentic feelings and needs.

The concept of internalization helps us understand what kids need to separate successfully; kids literally have to “take in” something from a parent so they can hold on to the good feelings of the relationship even when a parent says goodbye. English pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott introduced the idea that children create a mental representation of the parent-child relationship so that they can access the feelings of the relationship even when a parent is absent. Transitional objects help children with this process; a blanket or stuffed animal or object from home becomes a physical representation of the parent-child bond, reminding a child that parents still exist and are “there” for you even when they are not right in front of you. I always recommend transitional objects to parents whose kids struggle with separation anxiety—they are a way to help make tricky transitions feel more manageable. After all, to ease separation anxiety, we have to help kids “hold on to us” in our absence.

Often the child’s growing up corresponds quite accurately with the mother’s resumption of her own independence, and you would agree that a mother who cannot gradually fail in this matter of sensitive adaptation is failing in another sense; she is failing (because of her own immaturity or her own anxieties) to give her infant reasons for anger. An infant that has no reason for anger, but who of course has in him (or her) the usual amount of whatever are the ingredients of aggressiveness, is in a special difficulty, a difficulty in fusing aggression in with loving.

It is a joy to be hidden but disaster not to be found. —DONALD WINNICOTT

Comfort and consistent tactile experiences help the baby develop a sense of its body as a safe and consistent boundary. If the baby is not held and comforted, or is frequently dropped, or handled roughly, or neglected or abused—painful, disruptive experiences British pediatrician and psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott called impingements—the child will not grow to feel like a whole entity, sheltered and contained by her skin. The failure to master this first important developmental task makes it difficult to differentiate between self and others, inner and outer, thought and action, fantasy and reality. Later, the child or adult may use cutting to work out these conflicts in a concrete, literal way on the body, reverting back to the most primitive means of psychic organization the knows to test her own reality.

as long as we respond to the uncertainties with common sense, flexibility, and affection, most of us can be, in therapist Donald Winnicott’s words, “good enough” parents.

kapitalizmin varmış olduğumuz evresi üretken olmanın yaratıcı olmak anlamına geldiğini bir biçimde çok iyi kavradı. en değerli emek gücü kişisel yaratıcılıkta yatıyor. bu "yaratıcılık" donald winnicott'un çok güzel tarif ettiği gibi, enerjimizi, fikirlerimizi, buluşlarımızı, gücümüzü çekip aldığımız canlı kaynaktır. sanatsal bir melekeden ziyade yaşıyor olduğumuzu hissetme olgusundan gelen eylem kapasitesidir. s.21

We are born with a brain half-formed—more like a muddy lump of clay than a divine Olympian. As the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott put it, “There is no such thing as a baby.” The development of our personalities doesn’t take place in isolation, but in relationship with others—we are shaped and completed by unseen, unremembered forces; namely, our parents. This is frightening, for obvious reasons. Who knows what indignities we suffered, what torments and abuses, in this land before memory? Our character was formed without our even knowing it. In my case, I grew up feeling edgy, afraid; anxious. This anxiety seemed to predate my existence and exist independently of me. But I suspect it originated in my relationship with my father, around whom I was never safe.