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BOOK REVIEW (September 2016)
Adam Phillips (1988). Winnicott (London: Fontana Press).
INTRODUCTION
Adam Phillips has edited the essays of Charles Lamb, Walter Pater, and Edmund
Burke. When this book was written in 1988, he was affiliated to the Charing Cross
Hospital in London. Phillips was born in Wales and educated at Oxford University.
This introduction to the work of Donald Winnicott was published in the Modern
Masters Series (and was edited by Frank Kermode). This series brings together
introductory volumes to the work of leading theorists in the areas of literature,
humanities, and the social sciences. Winnicott is extremely well known in Britain
because of the broadcasts that he made on psychoanalysis from 1939-1962. In these
talks, Winnicott raised a number of important points on how to raise children and on
the role played by the ‘good-enough mother’ in the life of young children. Some of
these talks have already been published; they serve as an effective point of entry into
Winnicottian analysis.1 This book of talks on psychoanalysis was an attempt to make
the insights of psychoanalysis available to parents in Britain and elsewhere. In the
book under review, Phillips covers a number of areas in the analysis of children and
in the theory of psychoanalysis. In addition to the role played by the mother, they
include a number of Winnicottian innovations. So, for instance, Winnicott thought
that it was not enough to account for mental illness; it is equally important to
understand mental health. Furthermore, Winnicott felt that the gaps constituted in
human consciousness were analogous to the gaps in the evolutionary record.
Reading Darwin’s theory of evolution made Winnicott realize that it is possible to
explain clinical phenomena despite these endemic gaps in the fossil records.
Winnicott was extremely impressed by what mothers knew instinctively or were
1 See, for instance, Donald W. Winnicott (1993). Talking to Parents, introduction by T. Berry
Brazelton (Cambridge, MS: Perseus Publishing).

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able to learn of their own accord. He was as committed to learning from their
experiences of raising children as he was to share with them what his clinical
experiences had taught him. Winnicott’s approach was rather unusual given that no
other analyst had attempted to communicate directly with parents as he did. Most
analysts were talking ‘about’ parents but not directly ‘to’ parents. Winnicott wanted
to rectify this gap in communication between the community of analysts and the
community of parents. Darwin’s influence on Winnicott was responsible for helping
him to appreciate the importance of the environment in evolutionary theory; it led to
the development of his notion of the ‘holding environment.’ The Winnicottian child
was more likely to reach the state of mental health that was envisaged for him if he
grew up in a holding environment with a good enough mother. A holding
environment was one in which a child could experiment safely under the careful
watch of his mother.
THE WINNICOTTIAN SELF
Winnicott did not use the term ‘baby’ all that often; instead he focused on the
relationship between the baby and the mother under the guise of a ‘nursing couple.’
Another important term for Winnicott to describe the relationship between mother
and child was ‘transitional space.’ Winnicott also coined terms like ‘transitional
objects’ and ‘transitional phenomena’ to explain how children related to the presence
or absence of the mother. He was particularly interested in how children behaved
while they were waiting for the mother to re-appear after a period of absence;
needless to say, this should remind the reader of the ‘fort-da’ game in Sigmund
Freud’s work. The transitional object was defined as that which, if used properly,
could help to cope with the absence of the mother. A symptom then is akin to a
transitional object. In both cases, it is the ‘use’ made of rather than the structure of
the object and the symptom that matters. Another important pair of terms relating to
Winnicott’s theory of the self relates to the difference between the ‘true-self’ and the
‘false-self.’ The former was the source of all human creativity; the latter was a
protective measure on the part of the self to cope with difficult situations until the
development of the true self could be resumed under more favourable conditions.
Winnicott, like the child analyst Melanie Klein, was also interested in exploring the
earliest phases of childhood before the advent of the Oedipus complex.
THE ABILITY TO PLAY
Winnicott is however careful to not reduce the self to instinctual drives. The
instincts, he argued, serve the self and are not reducible to the self. The British
Society got a number of opportunities to observe children who were evacuated
during the war years. The attempts made by the Society to rehabilitate evacuated
children gave analysts a chance to incorporate their observational findings into a

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theory of child analysis. In other words, the British approach is more empirical than
other traditions of analysis on the continent that were dialectical in their orientation.
Furthermore, Winnicott does not provide ‘an authoritative translation’ in the clinical
situation; instead he prefers to let the patient ‘reveal himself to himself.’ The
Winnicottian self is not tragic by temperament; it is comic. The literary form that it
most closely resembles is the simplicity of the pastoral. The main criterion of health
for Winnicott is the ability to play. So, needless to say, there is a modest playfulness in
his approach to the act of analytic interpretation. Once a child is able to regain his
ability to seek joy in the act of playing, he has been restored to health. Whether the
ability to play takes on an added importance because he is preoccupied mainly with
children or whether it pertains to adults is not made clear. Compare this with the
equivalent Freudian criteria. The main criteria of health for Freud are ‘lieben und
arbeiten.’ In other words, the ability to love and the ability to work; ideally, Freud
expects the normative subject to be able to do both. These activities correspond to the
main difference in the Freudian psyche between the reproductive and self-
preservative instincts or the difference between object libido and ego libido. The
ability to play is not merely a release for the instincts; Winnicott’s model is not
related to drive theory but to object relations. What is really at stake then is the
feeling of intimacy that the infant experiences with his mother in the act of playing.
This model of play is common to all the schools of psychoanalysis at the British
Society when it came to the analysis of children; play was a substitute for talk; so
instead of being a talking cure as it is for adults, it becomes a kind of playing cure.
The clinical setting then is usually designed to accommodate a number of toys.
Drawings, sketches, and paintings made by young children then become the main
stuff of analysis; Winnicottian ‘squiggles’ have become well-known amongst child
therapists. Of course, these representations cannot speak for themselves; so children
are encouraged to free-associate around them. Since analysis aims to repair whatever
might have been missing in the child’s life (including the usual forms of maternal
and paternal deficits), it requires a holding environment in the clinic. Curing a
patient then is comparable to ‘caring’ for the patient.
ON DISTRESS AND TRAUMA
The model of childhood distress and trauma is related to the absence of the mother
and on whether or not the infant believes that she will return soon. When distress at
the maternal absence is prolonged it leads to trauma; Winnicott defines a trauma as
‘a break in life’s continuity.’ Chronic fear of a breakdown in adult life is usually a
consequence of having experienced an actual breakdown in infancy or early
childhood. That is why it is important for the analyst to help a patient to re-establish
the continuity of childhood experience. Unlike Freud who defines the main aim of
the organism to die in its own way; Winnicott argues that the main aim of the

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organism should be to live in its own way. An important criterion of health and
maturity for Winnicott is the child’s ‘capacity to be alone’ in the presence of the
mother.
Winnicott wrote a poem that presents this notion powerfully; it represents Christ on
the cross.
Mother below is weeping
weeping
weeping
Thus I knew her.
Once, stretched out on her lap
as now on dead tree
I learned to make her smile
to stem her tears
to undo her guilt
to cure her inward death
To enliven her was my living.
This poem was an attempt to work-through the fact that his mother was not able to
hold him adequately because of her own depression; Winnicott took the term ‘hold’
seriously. It was important for the mother to hold the infant in both her arms and in her
heart. These forms of ‘holding and handling’ in childhood constitute for Winnicott
‘the whole issue of human reliability.’ The child’s ability to play and handle reality is
also a function of such forms of maternal reassurance. Phillips also explains how
encountering the work of Anna Freud and Melanie Klein influenced Winnicott’s
theories of play in childhood and in the clinic. What these analysts had in common
despite theoretical differences (which we cannot go into here) is that children have
an active fantasy life. The point of entry into these fantasies is to observe how they
play and whether they play at all. Fantasies represented in playing are to the
analysis of children then what the interpretation of dreams is to the analysis of
adults – ‘the royal road to the unconscious.’ Needless to say, these analysts were also
excited about the pedagogical implications of their work. The usefulness of these
insights to those teaching in kindergartens should be obvious.
ANALYSIS OF CHILDREN
Winnicott’s interest in the analysis of children is also related to the fact that he was a
paediatrician by training; that is what gave him an advantage in handling children.
Winnicott’s diagnoses of the ailments of children differentiated between the child’s
ability or inability to use a symptom. Abnormal behaviour was related to an inability

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to use the symptom or make it a form of communication to parental figures.
Winnicott’s theories of childhood behaviour are also related to his observations of
how children behaved during periods of evacuation, while living in hostels, and on
whether they are able to make use of holding environments. There were, according
to Winnicott, three important phases in a child’s developmental process; these
corresponded to the normal phase when he has an ideal; the phase when the ideal
breaks down; and the final phase when the child is able to join a community despite
the loss of the ideal. If children become anti-social it is not because of privation but
deprivation. Winnicott also differentiates between integration, lack of integration,
unintegration, and disintegration in the child’s psychic formation. The main task of a
holding environment is to facilitate psychic integration by giving a child the chance
to experiment and integrate the learning therefrom. Winnicott went to the extent of
defining a psychosis as a consequence of environmental deprivation. Readers of
Winnicott should also pay careful attention to what he has to say in his model of
motherhood and in his attempts to integrate Kleinian terms like ‘reparation’ into his
own theory of childhood development. The main difference between Klein and
Winnicott is that the former is preoccupied with the effects of the child’s depression
on the mother; the latter is more interested in how the mother’s depression affects
the child. Winnicott worried about maternal depression because it forces the child to
live ‘reactively’ in a desperate bid to cheer her up. In situations characterised by
maternal or environmental deficiency, the child will be preoccupied with developing
forms of psychic self-sufficiency.
THE MATERNAL GAZE
Winnicott is particularly good in his description of transitional objects and
transitional phenomena and the role that they play in helping the child manage his
anxiety and control on the environment. This is because the transitional objects
substitute for the illusions that the child entertains about the environment and aid in
the process of weaning him from the mother (given that she cannot be completely
available). Weaning is important for both mother and child since it gives the mother
a chance to recover from the primary maternal preoccupation that characterises the
period when she is preparing to give birth. Winnicott has his own version of the
Lacanian mirror phase; the main mirror that he identifies however is the face of the
mother rather than an actual mirror. If the mother is still preoccupied, then, he will
get a glimpse of what she feels rather than get a clue as to who he is. It is therefore
important for the infant to be subject to a maternal gaze that can convince him of
who he is. The history of the subject is related to being seen. As Winnicott puts it:
When I look I am seen, so I exist
I can now afford to look and see.

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I now look for creatively and what I apperceive I also perceive.
In fact I take care not to see what is not there to be seen (unless I am tired).
The maternal gaze has implications for Winnicott’s approach to interpretation since
the analyst must not be intrusive. It must harness instead the give-and-take of
emotions between the mother and the child. And, finally, the reader must note that
‘transitional phenomena’ take primacy over ‘conclusive phenomena’ in Winnicottian
analysis. So this review itself is a transitional object. The reader must ultimately
embark on the task of reading both Adam Phillips and Donald Winnicott. This
review can at best help him to manage his anxiety while he does so.
SHIVA KUMAR SRINIVASAN