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Some six months before Dr Winnicott's death in January 1971, a group of young Anglican priests invited him to come to talk to them. He accepted, and in a casual exchange of conversation they told him that what they needed guidance about was how to differentiate between a person who seeks their help because he is sick and needs psychiatric treatment, and one who is capable of helping himself through talking with them. Telling this story to me, Winnicott said that he had been taken aback by the awesome simplicity of their question. He had paused a long while, thought and then replied:
‘If a person comes and talks to you and, listening to him, you feel he is boring you, then he is sick, and needs psychiatric treatment. But if he sustains your interest, no matter how grave his distress or conflict, then you can help him alright.’
I was deeply impressed by the wisdom of Winnicott's reply, and since then, whenever I see a person in consultation, this statement of his is never out of my mind.
Re-reading Winnicott's ‘Fragment of an Analysis’ has brought that question into an even sharper focus for me. We have two accounts of this patient from Winnicott, one which he recorded in his paper ‘Withdrawal and Regression’ (Winnicott 1954a, reproduced in the Appendix to this volume), and the other presented in ‘Fragment of an Analysis’, of which this is the definitive text.1 It is instructive to compare these accounts in their style, character and content.
For my argument it is important to distinguish between boring and boredom. The Oxford English Dictionary defines the verbal substantive boring as ‘the practice of annoying and wearying others’, and the noun boredom as ‘the state of being bored; tedium, ennui’. It is my hypothesis here that boring has the quality of the ‘anti-social tendency’ (Winnicott 1956) and implies a de