Symbolic and Anticipated: Winnicott's Attention to the Use of Black in the Consulting Room

This article addresses Donald Winnicott's consistent attention to the idea of black and blackness as manifested in his work in the consulting room from the late 1940s to the 1960s. It describes several very different pieces, published and unpublished, where the use of black is recorded in patients’ material and the different directions they open up: skin colour, psychoanalytic research, representations of trauma and serious disturbance. Both Winnicott and this article argue for caution in ascribing any fixed connotation to black and blackness while recognizing its importance across cultures and historical epochs. In one of the articles under discussion, ‘Hallucination and dehallucination’ (1957), Winnicott refers to two male patients drawing with black pencil and I have linked his discussion both to the more general area of modern art and artists who have been interested in black and to contemporary psychoanalytic interest in unrepresented states. I emphasize the complexity of the arenas opened up by Winnicott and argue for their historical importance.