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30th November 2021
Dear Editor,
The aim of my paper “On Winnicott’s Concept of Trauma” (commissioned by the Education Section of the IJP), was to examine and outline Winnicott’s writings on intrapsychic trauma. My examination resulted in further clarity, at least for me, that Winnicott’s focus on the mother’s psychic states of mind towards her infant makes all the difference to whether or not the infant will be protected from intrapsychic trauma at the start of life. This focus, as I suggested, means that Winnicott’s concept of trauma diverges from both Freud’s and Klein’s theories of anxiety. This divergence is one of the aspects of Winnicott’s theoretical matrix that, as I have argued elsewhere, advances psychoanalytic theory and practice (Abram 2013).
The authors of the letter suggest that there are several theories that complement Winnicott’s concept of trauma and they cite well-known formulations from the work of Bowlby, Stern and others. They also suggest that my paper on Winnicott would be “enriched” by including these theories. While I can see that the cited examples are certainly interesting, complementary observations that could be seen to enhance Winnicott’s concept of trauma, I am left questioning whether it is possible to integrate these theories into the fabric of Winnicott’s clinical paradigm. My question relates to the compatibility of different epistemologies that inevitably drive different types of research, i.e. the difference between evidence-based/observational research vs the Freudian single-case study research, to examine human development.
Winnicott’s clinical paradigm emanates not so much from his “observations” of the behaviour of the families he worked with in his role as a paediatrician but rather, and fundamentally, from his experience of being in analysis and becoming a psychoanalyst of children and adults (Abram [1996] 2007). What mostly interested Winnicott was to detail the ineffable connections between the intrapsychic, the interpsychic