You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
I have chosen to consider an aspect of Winnicott's contributions which, for many, is nothing more than his obscure way of expressing himself, an imperfection which may annoy his listeners or readers because it demands from them an effort to understand. I refer to his ‘nebulosity’, an expression that one often hears when commenting on his articles, which may be considered representative of his way of communicating with people. Rather than a limitation, however, I view it as a secret aspect of his creativity, which we can find also outside his writings (Winnicott 1971, pp. 65, 95): typical examples would be the Squiggle Game (Winnicott 1965) and, at times, his way of offering interpretations (Winnicott 1986a).
He is clear when he specifies the optimal conditions for creativity (Winnicott 1986b), and puts creativity typically in the context of playing: ‘In playing, and perhaps only in playing, the child or the adult is free to be creative’ (Winnicott 1986a).
Winnicott's ‘nebulosity’, therefore, has to be considered, in my view, beside his idea of creativity. It may also be seen as a way of making room for growth, and of encouraging a spontaneous gesture.
Offering a meaningless word or graphic sign may appear as a spontaneous gesture which takes place in a context, but for Winnicott it is more than that: it is an incentive to promote a response, an idea, a sign.
The ‘squiggle’, as we know, is nothing but a sign entirely empty of intrinsic meaning: ‘one must have in one's bones a theory of emotional development’. For Winnicott the same is true of a word offered to give way to any meaning. In creative terms, the word and the graphic sign—the squiggle, if you want—both have the capacity to give way to the other's expression. They both want to introduce in a casual way a situation of causality.
The casual has no specific demand and, for this very reason, favours the expression of self, of the true self, which we call the creative expression.
All creativity is, at its or