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In spite of possessing marked aesthetic sensibility and writing with a poet’s feeling for words (Ogden 2001), Winnicott never developed a comprehensive theory of artistic creation. He was more interested in what he called the creativity of everyday life and how this related back to early experience. Nevertheless, a theory of art is implicit in his writings and it cries out for fuller development. In this paper I build on previous papers (Wright 1998, 2000) and make a further attempt to draw such a theory from his work.
Winnicott’s ideas were rooted in clinical experience and he seldom developed their full theoretical potential. They were only as abstract as the clinical need demanded and like rich metaphors they continue to invite exploration. There are hints, for example, of a more aesthetic way of thinking in his statement that ‘cultural experiences are in direct continuity with play, the play of those who have not yet heard of games …’ (Winnicott 1967b/1971: 100), and likewise in his reference to ‘a third area, that of play, which expands into creative living and into the whole cultural life of man’ (1967b/1971: 102).
More cogently, perhaps, he writes of the infant’s innate potential for creativity, its roots lying at the very beginning of life in the feeding situation but only realized within and through the mother’s provision. As Winnicott puts it, the infant has the experience of ‘creating the breast’ (‘primary creativity’) but only when the mother is attuned
enough to give it in a way that corresponds to the baby’s anticipation (Winnicott 1953). It is important to note that this way of thinking subtly transforms the classical concept of wish-fulfillment by stressing its object-relational aspect: primary creativity is more than libidinal satisfaction – it involves the finding by the baby, and provision by the mother, of an external form (the breast) that corresponds to the baby’s inner, subjective state.
This kind of relation between inner and oute