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Winnicotts ideas about anger, aggression and dictatorship are consistent with what we have come to understand about the healthy individual and the healthy society. In a previous article, entitled ‘In search of Winnicott's aggression’, the authors concluded that:
In the beginning, creativity and aggression exist as potentials; in the healthy individual (and Winnicott would say, the healthy society) they have become achievements. The recognition of one's personal aggression and potential for destruction, the acceptance of this destructiveness, its containment in fantasy, as well as the recognition of its origins in and links with primitive love, lead to the possibility of living creatively and with zest. (Melmed Posner et al., 2001, p. 187)
At the macrocosm is that which he understood at the microcosm namely, that the individual must protest and defend against impingements. For Winnicott, compliance is ill health and immaturity. His view is that the unconscious motivation of society is no different than the unconscious motivation of the individual.
In an early essay, ‘Discussion of war aims’ (1940) Winnicott asks us to accept the axiom that, ‘If we are better than our enemies, we are only a little better’ (1940, p. 211). Today as at that time, we are in the apparently fortunate position of having an enemy who says. ‘I am bad, I intend to be bad’, which