Chapter 16 On the Margins: The Role of the Father in Winnicott's Writings

I like ‘edges’. They show where I stop and you start.

The proposition that Winnicott largely ignored the father’s role is taken as almost axiomatic by present day commentators and critics of his work, and likewise its corollary, that this neglect represents a serious limitation in respect of his developmental theory. This has not always been the prevalent view. Following Winnicott’s death in 1971, his first exponents (Davis and Wallbridge 1981; Clancier and Kalmanovitch 1987) confined themselves to alluding without further comment to his predisposition towards the mother-infant perspective. Yet the omission had been remarked on. Thereafter most commentators, sympathetic or otherwise, followed Rycroft (1985) in lamenting the virtual absence of the paternal dimension in his writings, while offering various conjectures for this neglect (Chodorow 1989; Sayers 1991; ; Rodman 2003). A small volume edited by Richards and Wilce (1997) contains a thoughtful series of essays on the topic of the elusive Winnicottian father, acknowledging and attempting to redress the perceived deficiency. Yet the presumption has remained as entrenched as ever. Armellini (2001) is to my

knowledge the only writer so far to have seriously challenged the received view. Like him I shall be arguing that a balanced reading of Winnicott’s written legacy shows that this claim of neglect remains at best a partial truth, and the consequent criticism misconceived, at least in part.

My standpoint is this: Winnicott (1957: 123) readily admitted that he felt especially drawn to the intricacies of the evolving mother-child relationship. Moreover, he regarded the mother’s role at the start of the infant’s life as primary, even exclusive. Naturally therefore, his contributions to psychoanalytic theory focus principally on this early period with all its potential vicissitudes and impact on the individual’s future ps