Sacred Psychoanalysis - etheses Repository - University of ...

2004). It was also an important feature of his personal life that significantly influenced his
theories. 161
Fourthly, stemming from Winnicott’s interest in religion, his ideas resonate with the
potential for re-birth and resurrection (Hopkins 1989; Ulanov 2001; Hoffman 2004).
Winnicott’s concepts provide a foundation for the psychological re-birth of an infant,
particularly where there has been failure in the maternal environment as can be seen in his
treatment. In his clinical work with a little girl called the ‘Piggle’ and who intriguingly
asked Winnicott if he went to church 162 , Winnicott concluded that by allowing her to both
destroy and create him symbolically through a pipe-cleaner man she was enabled to
discover herself (Winnicott 1991). His concept of transitional space can also be seen as
transcendent space where a person transcends the limitations of the early environment to
become what they potentially could be, a being. Winnicott experienced this profoundly in
his own life when falling in love with Clare Britton and subsequently divorcing his first wife
in what had been a troubled marriage (Kahr 1996; Rodman 2003). An important outcome
for Winnicott was a highly creative decade of writing, so Clare’s comment ‘you would have
161
‘Winnicott never courted students and declined the many invitations to form a group or school that would
study, teach and elaborate his ideas. He did, however, accept his own need for at least one person to
accompany the place of the other, and so, throughout his marriage to Clare, and his complex relation to an
analysand, Masud Khan, and more subtly, yet as influentially, with Marion Milner, he tested his thinking and
used criticism. Winnicott’s style cannot be understood, in my view, unless the place of the impishly critical
other is understood, a psychic location that certainly reflected a part of his personality, but one which a few
close friends occupied throughout life’ (Bollas quoted in Rodman 2003: 212).
162
‘She had now practically finished with the toys and said to me: “Do you go to church?” I didn’t know how
to answer.
Me: Well, sometimes. Do you?
Gabrielle: I would like to go, but mummy and daddy would not like to. I don’t know why.
Me: Why do people go to church?
Gabrielle: I don’t know.
Me: is it something to do with God?
Gabrielle: No.’ (Ramzy 1980: 182).
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