Some Thoughts on the Inner World and the Environment. Setting the Scene

Problems of interpretation concerning matters to do with the interrelation between the inner world and the environment was the subject of a conference given by members of the Group of Independent Psychoanalysts of the British Psycho-Analytical Society. This paper 'set the scene' by outlining the background; first, by giving an historical and theoretical description and explanation of the 'Group of Independent Psychoanalysts', second, by explaining how the concepts 'inner world' and 'environment' can be understood; and third, by examining some of the theoretical and clinical ideas held over the years by various authorities about their interrelationship. Emphasis was given to Donald Winnicott's views on the tiny infant, whose well-being is totally dependent on the empathic attunement of a mother who, not yet recognized and related to, is effectively the infant's protective 'environment'; and on psychoanalysis of certain severely disturbed analysands whose earliest stages had miscarried, in which the analyst might sometimes need to be an 'environment-analyst' with the intuitive empathy the mother had lacked. Finally, the correlation of this notion with that of countertransference was discussed.