Object Relations Theories and Psychopathology: Winnicott
Although Winnicott never presented his ideas “in a clearly organized manner,” he “espoused a consistent view of development throughout his work, and his views on psychopathology and treatment emanate from this developmental scheme.” His goal was to understand “the preoedipal phases of development and their role in psychopathology.”
Development
Everyone is born with a drive (“maturational process”) “to develop in a given direction.” If the facilitating environment is not “good enough,” one’s drive and thus development might be blocked. Our development consists of three phases of dependence: absolute dependence, relative dependence, and toward independence. The last phase is the equivalent of the oedipal stage.Absolute Dependence
Relative Dependence
Child. The child moves from absolute to relative dependence when he realizes his dependence on his mother, usually around six months. With this new awareness comes anxiety about separating from his mother. The infant mitigates his separation anxiety by internalizing his mother (that is, developing a sense of his mother even when she is not physically there) by developing transitional phenomena.
Transitional phenomena are intermediaries between the fantasy of omnipotence in absolute dependence and the acceptance of reality in relative dependence. Initially, transitional phenomena are anything that are both “mine” and “not mine.” Cooing is an example, as “the infant emits the sound from within [mine] but hears it from without [not mine].”
The infant eventually comes in possession of a transitional object. The object is illusional, existing between fantasy (delusion) and reality. The infant knows that the object actually exists and is not part of his fantasy life, but he also imbues the object with fantastical power. Because he imbues the object with this power, it’s able to reduce his anxiety; he knows the object is not his mother but treats it as though it were his mother.
Use of the transitional object marks a growth in development. Before the transitional object, he used his mother for comfort, and now he uses “a piece of the real world to fill an emotional need,” and as such, he’s “moving away from omnipotent fantasy and toward reality.” The transitional object also “begins the world of illusion and prepares the way for play in childhood.” Play “is based on giving illusory meaning to something real. The attributed meaning is known to be an illusion but is treated during play as though it were not.” All creative endeavors are transitional phenomena. This “intermediate area of experience must continue into adult life for creative and cultural living, which he identified with mental life.”
As the infant grows and develops a sense of temporal continuity, he realizes that “the ‘object mother’ whom [he] ‘destroys’ when excited is the same as the ‘environmental mother’ whom [he] loves when quiescent.” The infant thus realizes that he has been injuring the mother he loves. This is Klein’s depressive position, which Winnicott calls the stage of concern.
It is crucial here that the infant comes to realize that his aggression “neither injures nor destroys [his] mother.” He is now “able to experience love and hate, positive and negative feelings, to the same mother without fear of injury or destruction. Guilt, in the sense of concern for others, is felt, but it facilitates rather than blocks the maturational process by leading to altruism and ethical responsibility.”
Mother. In absolute dependence, the mother almost completely adapts to “hold” the infant. In relative dependence, the mother does less for the infant, forcing him to relinquish his fantasy of omnipotence. She begins to “fail” the infant and in so doing helps him to accept reality. She begins to respond “less out of empathy and more out of an understanding of the child’s communication.”
She provides ego support “both by providing a safe, protected environment, and by allowing the child to explore, manipulate the environment, and to play without interference while continuing a relationship with the child.” She allows the infant to develop the capacity to be alone by offering “an ego relationship in which she is not threatened by the child’s being alone in her presence and she does not withdraw. She must allow herself to be ignored.”
Toward Independence
When the child has attained integration and whole object relations, he has moved toward independence, which is synonymous with the oedipal phase. Winnicott agreed with the classical tradition that the child was now capable of three-party relationships, meaning “he can now move beyond an independent relationship with each parent to an awareness that the parents have a relationship with each other from which the child is excluded.”
Development
Everyone is born with a drive (“maturational process”) “to develop in a given direction.” If the facilitating environment is not “good enough,” one’s drive and thus development might be blocked. Our development consists of three phases of dependence: absolute dependence, relative dependence, and toward independence. The last phase is the equivalent of the oedipal stage.Absolute Dependence
Infant. The neonate is born in a state of unintegration (his feelings “not experienced as belonging to a common whole”) and undifferentiation (unable to differentiate himself from his mother). He also lacks an understanding of reality, his experience being that he just needs to desire a need in order for it to be met. Additionally, he lacks a notion of time, not knowing that he is a self and not having a sense of the continuity of self. Because his “sense of existence is rudimentary, any disruption threatens the minimal sense of existence the infant is able to feel at this stage,” thus producing annihilation anxiety.
The infant’s first developmental task is integration. His second developmental task, not achieved until the stage of relative dependence, is personalization, that is, differentiation, which results in realizing that he is different from his mother. His third developmental task is realization (i.e., to develop a sense of reality), his sense of omnipotence going away when he begins to encounter environmental failures. Ideally, these failures “provide the infant with ‘doses’ of reality in manageable portions.”
Aggression is inborn; even in the womb, the baby kicks. However, the infant does not initially understand that jos aggression hurts his mother, and so Winnicott calls his ruthlessness “pre-ruth.” He wrote: “The normal child enjoys a ruthless relation to his mother, mostly showing in play, and he needs his mother because only she can be expected to tolerate his ruthless relation to her even in play, because this really hurts her and wears her out.”
Self-object differentiation begins at about six months when the infant realizes he is not omnipotent. This is the beginning of his sense of reality. The infant “experiences its aggressiveness as expelling the object from the sphere of omnipotence. The object must be ‘destroyed,’ and only later, when it is ‘refound’ as an external object in the phase of relative dependence, can it be ‘used.’”
The infant’s first developmental task is integration. His second developmental task, not achieved until the stage of relative dependence, is personalization, that is, differentiation, which results in realizing that he is different from his mother. His third developmental task is realization (i.e., to develop a sense of reality), his sense of omnipotence going away when he begins to encounter environmental failures. Ideally, these failures “provide the infant with ‘doses’ of reality in manageable portions.”
Aggression is inborn; even in the womb, the baby kicks. However, the infant does not initially understand that jos aggression hurts his mother, and so Winnicott calls his ruthlessness “pre-ruth.” He wrote: “The normal child enjoys a ruthless relation to his mother, mostly showing in play, and he needs his mother because only she can be expected to tolerate his ruthless relation to her even in play, because this really hurts her and wears her out.”
Self-object differentiation begins at about six months when the infant realizes he is not omnipotent. This is the beginning of his sense of reality. The infant “experiences its aggressiveness as expelling the object from the sphere of omnipotence. The object must be ‘destroyed,’ and only later, when it is ‘refound’ as an external object in the phase of relative dependence, can it be ‘used.’”
Mother. Toward the end of pregnancy, the mother enters a period of “primary maternal preoccupation,” a preoccupation that “includes a natural adaptation to give up her previous life entirely or partially in order to meet the needs of the infant.” This allows “the infant to bond without awareness of separateness and thereby makes possible the infant’s experience of omnipotence.” Through empathy, the mother is able to sense the infant’s needs. “The empathic mother interprets her infant’s behavior as a communication to her, even though the infant does not intend to communicate. The infant cries and the mother interprets the cry as a signal of hunger.”
The mother must be an “object mother” and provide for the infant’s instinctual needs — e.g., by feeding him and keeping his diapers clean. The mother must also be an “ego mother” and provide for the infant’s ego needs — e.g., “the infant needs an environment in which air and water temperatures are relatively comfortable, the noise level is neither stimulating nor assaultive, and there is visual stimulation that is interesting without being overwhelming,” and “the environment must be relatively free of ‘impingements’ that would interfere with emotional growth.”
The infant’s primary developmental tasks (integration, personalization, realization) are ego needs. The good-enough mother provides a holding environment in which the infant’s instinctual needs and ego needs are met. By meeting both sets of needs, the mother keeps environmental impingements from affecting the infant and thus allows him to be free from annihilation anxiety and to continue to believe in his omnipotence. One of the things that the mother must hold is the infant’s aggression; again, the infant “attacks” the mother’s body “and the mother must be willing to absorb and hold such aggressive attacks.”
The mother must be an “object mother” and provide for the infant’s instinctual needs — e.g., by feeding him and keeping his diapers clean. The mother must also be an “ego mother” and provide for the infant’s ego needs — e.g., “the infant needs an environment in which air and water temperatures are relatively comfortable, the noise level is neither stimulating nor assaultive, and there is visual stimulation that is interesting without being overwhelming,” and “the environment must be relatively free of ‘impingements’ that would interfere with emotional growth.”
The infant’s primary developmental tasks (integration, personalization, realization) are ego needs. The good-enough mother provides a holding environment in which the infant’s instinctual needs and ego needs are met. By meeting both sets of needs, the mother keeps environmental impingements from affecting the infant and thus allows him to be free from annihilation anxiety and to continue to believe in his omnipotence. One of the things that the mother must hold is the infant’s aggression; again, the infant “attacks” the mother’s body “and the mother must be willing to absorb and hold such aggressive attacks.”
Relative Dependence
Child. The child moves from absolute to relative dependence when he realizes his dependence on his mother, usually around six months. With this new awareness comes anxiety about separating from his mother. The infant mitigates his separation anxiety by internalizing his mother (that is, developing a sense of his mother even when she is not physically there) by developing transitional phenomena.
Transitional phenomena are intermediaries between the fantasy of omnipotence in absolute dependence and the acceptance of reality in relative dependence. Initially, transitional phenomena are anything that are both “mine” and “not mine.” Cooing is an example, as “the infant emits the sound from within [mine] but hears it from without [not mine].”
The infant eventually comes in possession of a transitional object. The object is illusional, existing between fantasy (delusion) and reality. The infant knows that the object actually exists and is not part of his fantasy life, but he also imbues the object with fantastical power. Because he imbues the object with this power, it’s able to reduce his anxiety; he knows the object is not his mother but treats it as though it were his mother.
Use of the transitional object marks a growth in development. Before the transitional object, he used his mother for comfort, and now he uses “a piece of the real world to fill an emotional need,” and as such, he’s “moving away from omnipotent fantasy and toward reality.” The transitional object also “begins the world of illusion and prepares the way for play in childhood.” Play “is based on giving illusory meaning to something real. The attributed meaning is known to be an illusion but is treated during play as though it were not.” All creative endeavors are transitional phenomena. This “intermediate area of experience must continue into adult life for creative and cultural living, which he identified with mental life.”
As the infant grows and develops a sense of temporal continuity, he realizes that “the ‘object mother’ whom [he] ‘destroys’ when excited is the same as the ‘environmental mother’ whom [he] loves when quiescent.” The infant thus realizes that he has been injuring the mother he loves. This is Klein’s depressive position, which Winnicott calls the stage of concern.
It is crucial here that the infant comes to realize that his aggression “neither injures nor destroys [his] mother.” He is now “able to experience love and hate, positive and negative feelings, to the same mother without fear of injury or destruction. Guilt, in the sense of concern for others, is felt, but it facilitates rather than blocks the maturational process by leading to altruism and ethical responsibility.”
Mother. In absolute dependence, the mother almost completely adapts to “hold” the infant. In relative dependence, the mother does less for the infant, forcing him to relinquish his fantasy of omnipotence. She begins to “fail” the infant and in so doing helps him to accept reality. She begins to respond “less out of empathy and more out of an understanding of the child’s communication.”
She provides ego support “both by providing a safe, protected environment, and by allowing the child to explore, manipulate the environment, and to play without interference while continuing a relationship with the child.” She allows the infant to develop the capacity to be alone by offering “an ego relationship in which she is not threatened by the child’s being alone in her presence and she does not withdraw. She must allow herself to be ignored.”
Toward Independence
When the child has attained integration and whole object relations, he has moved toward independence, which is synonymous with the oedipal phase. Winnicott agreed with the classical tradition that the child was now capable of three-party relationships, meaning “he can now move beyond an independent relationship with each parent to an awareness that the parents have a relationship with each other from which the child is excluded.”
Psychopathology and Treatment
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