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In the Winnicott archives a set of unpublished notes stands as Winnicott’s final statement on his theory of aggression. Stimulated by this archive discovery Part One of this paper examines the notes associated with Winnicott’s theoretical advances in his late writings 1968–70. I suggest that Winnicott’s emphasis in the ‘survival of the object’ constitutes a clinical concept of aggression rooted in psychoanalytic methodology that contrasts with Freud’s speculative concept of the death instinct with its roots in biology. My conclusions in Part One set the foundations for Part Two.
The main aim in Part Two is to re-present my interpretation and attempt to extend Winnicott’s thesis as presented in Part One. I propose that the clinical implications in Winnicott’s formulations suggest the notion of an intra-psychic surviving and non-surviving object. These intra-psychic objects arise through an admixture of the primary object’s oscillations between psychic survival and non-survival of the newborn’s needs. I conclude that this specific inter-psychic dynamic between object and subject is at the heart of human development which is naturally revivified in the transference-coun-
tertransference matrix. Consequently, the notion of psychic survival constitutes the specificity of clinical psychoanalysis as a therapeutic treatment.
… it is not possible to be original except on a basis of tradition
The theme of the 21st EPF Congress in 2008 invited reflection on how the shadow of Freud’s heritage – ‘the shadow of the object’ – falls on the practice and theory of psychoanalysis today. That the congress was to take place in Vienna added considerable significance to this theme and instigated my re-examination of the notes in the Winnicott archives. As far as can be ascertained these notes had been written weeks or even days before Winnicott died on January 25, 1