Human Development I: Birth to Latency

Third Year Adult Psychoanalytic Training (APT)
2024-25, Fall Term — Fridays, 3:30-5:00pm
Rosemary Kelly, MD MPH

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September 13, 2024 — Winnicott: Infant experience and the environmental mother

[28 pages]

Winnicott elegantly writes about early infant experience, and the importance of the ‘good enough mother’ to scaffold infants so they can tolerate and recover from environmental impingements.  He offers juxtapositions for us to consider when the environment doesn’t adequately scaffold the infant, including overwhelming anxiety, problems of integration and disruptions in the sense of ‘going on being’, among others.  The article by Bach et al. provides some clinical manifestations in adult patients suggestive of early developmental disruptions, as well as some clinical strategies to consider as we attempt to make contact with these patients.

Winnicott, D. (1965). Ego Integration in Child Development, Int. Psycho-Anal. Lib., (64):56-63

Bach, S.; Grossmark, C.; & Kandall, E. (2014) The Empty Self and the Perils of Attachment. Psychoanalytic Review 101:321-340

Optional Reading

Winnicott, D.W. (1956). “Primary maternal preoccupation” in Through Paediatrics to Psycho-Analysis. London: Hogarth Press (1975), pp300-305.

Moskowitz, S. (2011) Primary Maternal Preoccupation Disrupted by Trauma and Loss: Early Years of the Project. Journal of Infant, Child & Adolescent Psychotherapy 10:229-237.