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18 AUGUST 2008
NO 1335
Clare Winnicott
That brings me finally to the values that inform Clare Winnicott's thinking and to their contemporary relevance. Here too we find her unique blend of common sense and psychoanalytic insight. Her view of the psyche and of social life was essentially dynamic in that she saw both as a resultant of a balance of forces: on the one hand those that tend towards individuation, authenticity, and maturation; on the other, the stress, disruption, and loss that challenge the self with disintegration and false accommodation to a traumatic reality.
She was acutely aware that harmonious relationships could prevail, but that maturity involves being able to cope with discord as well. Nothing is so perfect that it can last for ever. What makes her writings interesting to us today is that, unlike many of her psychoanalytic contemporaries she did not reify any particular psychoanalytic construct – such as transference interpretations – as a route towards successful therapy. She was, rather, interested in the psychotherapeutic process, and how it can help people towards authenticity and a sense of self. For her, establishing a therapeutic conversation was what mattered, not what the content of that conversation happened to be. She saw that the moment a child can communicate in words something of his inner world, a foothold has been established. Recovery flows from speaking the truth about feelings and being sensitively heard, not judged, organized, or advised. And, of course, it is the possibility of being heard that is the catalyst that allows the feelings to flow and the words to form.
The voice that comes through these pages is imbued with the values that make a good therapist. It combines authority with modesty, a simplicity that is not afraid to tackle complex or seemingly intractable problems, an authenticity that flows from experience but is informed by the ideas and theories that enable that experience to be reflected upon and digested. Clare Winnicott knew what was good and what was wrong, which were the defences needed to survive in a difficult world, and those that could usefully be discarded. She managed to be both her own woman and a devoted wife to one of the outstanding psychoanalysts of his day. Her harmonious additions bring depth and completeness to the mercurial melodies of her husband.
Clare met D.W.W. while working with orphans and evacuees who were the innocent child victims of war. Today's social work clients are casualties of family breakdown in an increasingly fragmented, ever changing, regression-inducing, global society. Borderline clients, refugees, and victims of torture need both social work and psychotherapy if they are to survive psychologically, let alone flourish. Clare Winnicott will no doubt continue to be remembered because of whose wife she was. With the help of this volume, however, D.W.W. and Clare's complementarity becomes clearer and shows the way for the muchneeded revival of partnership between psychotherapy and social work. Without that mutual support and understanding, the whole picture – the integration that is the hallmark of the authenticity Donald and Clare strove for – will remain for ever elusive.
JEREMY HOLMES
Holmes, Jeremy. (2004).
Foreword. In Kanter, Joel. (Ed.). Face to Face with Children: The
Life and Work of Clare Winnicott. London. H. Karnac (Books) Ltd.
pp. xxi-xxii.
