Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

includes religion as his ‘fundamental question - How do people acquire a sense of self – is
profoundly religious’ (Gay 1983: 371). 145
Winnicott’s contribution to psychoanalysis is his synthesizing of concepts from Freud 146
and Klein, interpreted by a vast clinical experience of mothers and babies and evolving
a
147
creative form of object relations’ theory, that finds parallels in intersubjective approaches
(Sayers 2005). Winnicott focused on the central ontological question of being – how a
person develops out of/from a dependent, unintegrated unit into an independent, integrated
self capable of intrapersonal, interpersonal and extrapersonal ‘ongoing-in-being’ and ‘being-
at-one-with’ (Winnicott 1971: 80). Creative being is central to being human even if this is
‘hidden away’ as ‘a secret life’ (Winnicott 1971: 68) which people need to search for
(Winnicott 1971: 29, 56-64). A key aspect of early relationships and ‘good enough’
mothering is to enable the discovery of ‘a sense of self … on the basis of this relating in this
sense of BEING’ (Winnicott 1971: 80). Winnicott concludes ‘after being – doing and being
done to. But first, being’ (Winnicott 1971: 85).
Ogden values Winnicott’s contribution as a ‘dialectician … Many of Winnicott’s most
valuable clinical and theoretical contributions are in the form of paradoxes that he asks us to
accept without resolving, for the truth of the paradox lies in neither of its poles, but the
space between them’ (Ogden 1985: 346). Winnicott’s unique form of object relations
145 A theme examined in detail by Ulanov (Ulanov 2001).
146 Winnicott while acknowledging the importance of Freud’s ideas, is regarded as so altering their meaning
and context, that they bear little relation to the drive theories advocated by Freud (Fulgencio 2007). Girard
argues the converse is true (Girard 2010).
147 It is estimated that in Winnicott’s 40 year career as a paediatrician at Paddington Green Children’s
Hospital, London, he had 60,000 consultations with mothers and babies (Ramzy 1980: xii). However one of
Winnicott’s limitations was the limited role he gave to fathers (Elmhirst 1996).
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