The Paradoxical in Winnicott

It is a fact that during the last fifty years Winnicott has maintained a position of great importance in the psychoanalytic sphere, although quite frequently this has been due to distortions or simplifications, or even misappropriations, of his work also by exponents of schools that are poles apart from his stance.

I would briefly like to recall that Winnicott's way of thinking originated in Great Britain in the so-called Independents group and is part of the research trend that can be characterized by two precise aspects: first of all the reassessment of the function of the real mother compared to the exclusive monopoly of unconscious phantasy and, linked to this, the process that leads to the acquisition of a sense of continuity of self during the first stage of life.

This research had its origins in the early 1940s when, during a meeting of the British Psychoanalytic Society, the famous episode known to all occurred: Winnicott leapt from his chair, struck by an idea, and exclaimed: «There is no such thing as a baby!» Almost ten years later he explained that intuition in the following words: «…I would say that before object relationships the state of affairs is this: that the unit is not the individual, the unit is an environment-individual set-up. The centre of gravity of the being does not start off in the individual. It is in the total set-up. By good-enough child care, technique, holding, and general management the shell becomes gradually taken over and the kernel […] can begin to be an individual» (Winnicott, 1952b, 99).

Since then numerous authors, also from many diverse areas, have been indebted to this theoretical manifesto. However, as previously stated, the profound nature of this idea has often been seriously undermined through misinterpretations and incorrect attributions of meaning - starting with the importance of the real mother in the earliest period of life - thanks precisely to its widespread diffusion. The concept is sometimes understood on a merel