I want to start by sharing with you that last Sunday April 7 it was fulfilled one more year of the birth of the Dr. Donald Woods Winnicottwho was born on April 7, 1896, in Plymouth, United Kingdom.
D. Winnicott studied medicine. served as surgeon during the First World War in the period 1914-1918. He graduated with a degree in pediatrics in 1920, beginning to work as pediatrician in 1923 at Paddington Green Children's Hospital in London. Start your analysis in 1923 with James Strachey, Joan Rivière later being his second analyst. Some of Rivière's works have already been commented on in other sessions of this column and on this occasion I wanted to share with you this introductory note about Winnicott since in recent sessions, talking about child psychoanalysis, we have begun to cite her work.
Well, one of the questions with which I would like to start today and which is proposed by our author is regarding the child's ability to be alone. It may seem like something not so relevant, let's be careful with that. The paradox is that in order to learn to be alone, you must first learn to be accompanied. For Winnicott, the ability to be alone constitutes one of the most important signs of maturity within emotional development. This concept is still valid. Children learn to be alone if they were able to be alone for a long time in the presence of another caregiver. Being alone in the presence of another person allows the child to carry out his or her own actions. The child knows that he is observed and therefore controlled, cared for, attended to, even when the situation does not require any type of special attention. Have you noticed that sometimes while your child or a child plays, he or she eventually looks up to seek the attention of his or her caregiver? How disappointing to look up and not find someone waiting for us (I think this is the right word in this sentence. Wait).
Over time, the individual acquires the ability to renounce the real presence of the mother or whoever performs the care functions. This fact has been called “establishing an internalized environment,” and it lays the foundation for what will later be called self-confidence, the ability to be alone, and creative capacity. The topic of creativity is also very important for Winnicott, but we will talk about that in another session.
As I told you, the path to independence first goes through dependency. It is very important to know that we are seen, observed. Knowing ourselves controlled. Since to some extent control gives confidence and security (pathological expressions of control are a separate thing). In some way, for personalities with obsessive traits, knowing that things will always be as they arrange them gives them a certain calm, but I'm not referring to that so much. I'm talking about love, for example. Although it seems that nowadays the idea of not depending on or not needing others is widely sold, the truth is that for many people, existence really becomes very complicated when they experience themselves alone, with a certain feeling of emptiness and with the pressing need. to be able to count on someone by your side. Some live trying to avoid it and thus become self-sufficient in many life situations. Others simply go from one relationship to another looking for a satiety that does not come.
Something parents can do to address this need of their babies is to always seek to connect with them. You could tell me that you do and that you are there for your son, but the truth is that we don't realize that many times we don't see them. And I don't mean seeing them only in the physiological sense of what the eyes do when placed in front of objects but in the subjective sense of libidinally investing the other. Does it happen to you that you get angry when your partner is more attentive to the cell phone or television than to what you are talking to him or her? The same thing sometimes happens to us with our children. Furthermore, we sit them in front of the television or in front of the tablet, delegating the commitment of being in front of the children to the electronic devices. Peace and good, see you next Thursday.
More from the same author:
#Session #Happy #birthday #Winnicott
