The Value of Concepts

D.W.Winnicott was a brilliant child psychologist.
Together with John Bowlby they set the tone for modern parenting, designed to make the creation of healthy well adjusted
babies / children / adults - not just a possibility, but a reality.

I would urge anybody interested in the subject to read an article:
“The Philisophers Mail.”
The Great Psychoanalysts Vol 1.
Donald Winnicott.

Here is an excerpt taken from it.

(Editors note.)
How do you build a better world? There are so many well-known, urgent places you might start: malaria, carbon emissions, tax evasion, the drug trade, soil erosion, water pollution…
Donald Winnicott deserves his place in history because of the dramatic simplicity of his approach.

He proposed that the happiness and future satisfaction of the human race depended ultimately not so much on external political issues, but on something far closer to home: the way parents bring up their children.
All the sicknesses of humanity were, in his view, in essence consequences of a failure of parental provision. Fascism, delinquency, rage, misogyny, alcoholism, these were only the symptoms of poor childhoods that the collective would have to pay for. The road to a better society begins in the nursery.

Winnicott said:
“I find it useful to divide the world of people into two classes. There are those who were never ‘let down’ as babies and who are to that extent candidates for the enjoyment of life and of living.
There are also those who did suffer traumatic experiences of the kind that result from environmental letdown, and who must carry with them all their lives the memories of the state they were in at moments of disaster. These are candidates for lives of storm and stress and perhaps illness.’
We’re still learning how to love our children – and that, Winnicott would argue, is why the world is still full of the walking-wounded, people of outward ‘success’ and respectability who are nevertheless not quite ‘real’ inside.....”

“Jazzer speaking:
After a childhood of isolation I set out to study what went so wrong for me - and to discover whether there was any way that I could possibly help things to come right.
I soon discovered the books and papers written for a series put out by
“The British Psychoanalytic Institute,”
by DW Winnicott & John Bowlby.

As this item is getting rather long, I’ll just give you one example of D.W.W.s observational genius.
As mothers brought their children into his clinical practice he had the opportunity to study their demeanour.
He noticed that a depressed baby would sit in his high chair, slumped, looking desolate, dejected, forlorn, silent, to all intents and purposes - lost.
(An unbonded baby.)

Then he observed that a confident baby would sit up in his chair, bright and sparky, full of beans, watching everything, being noisy and alive - banging a spoon on his high chair tray.
Winnicott put words to this performance.
After some time he decided that the child was actually saying
in morse code:

“I - AM - I !”

“I AM I”
“LOOK AT ME”
“I’M OVER HERE.”

ie - exuding confidence.
(Bonded and secure.)

As a kiddy I was not just afraid of my first day at school - I was afraid of SCHOOL.
Not just afraid of my first day at work,
I was afraid of WORK.
Not just afraid of my first public performance.
I was afraid of PERFORMING.
(I’m a musician remember.)

I solved all of these issues for my self with the retrospective use of Donald Winnicott’s repeated concept of:

“I - AM - I.”

(sorry this is so long)

 

@TracyJS
Hi babe.
Take care.
Give your fur-baby a kiss
and a stroke from me,
love
Dave x
Jazzer