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NO 1698
Communicating with Children
Suppose that we could agree that a rough definition of communication would be that it is quite simply a matter of giving and taking between people. A moment of communication is a moment of reciprocal exchange. The essential ingredient of communication is, of course, the will and the ability to communicate, and these depend on the individual’s balance of trust and suspicion, which in turn depends on what is stored up in his or her inner world of the unconscious memories of previous communications, including the very earliest, and on his or her ability to use symbols. A symbol is simply something that is allowed to stand for something else. Words and gifts are symbols which have their own accepted meaning, but we who use them give them meaning over and above their literal content by the way in which we select them and use them. Words and other symbols can also be used defensively to hide ourselves and our feelings and to come between us and other people. But this is in itself a form of communication showing that we are unwilling or unable to communicate.
The capacity for symbol formation in the individual is an important part of normal development and is a crucial matter in the capacity to communicate and to become socialized.
Put briefly, a symbol is a secondary phenomenon which can be accepted and allowed to stand for a primary one, so that the primary one can be relinquished temporarily, and later permanently, as it becomes part of the phenomena and processes of everyday life. To put this in its simplest terms, the infant, whose primary needs for food and care are continuously met in a way reliable enough to bring him satisfaction and a sense of well-being, stores up memories of these experiences and becomes able to fill the gaps in care, when mother is not actively caring for him, by finding pleasure and satisfaction in other things — the blanket or the woolly toy or whatever is available, his own thumb perhaps, or a dummy. This other thing gives satisfaction because it stands for the primary satisfactions and keeps alive memories of them.
But there is more to it than this, because the other thing stands, at one and the same time, for the satisfaction-seeking infant and the mother who satisfies. The blanket or the woolly toy is therefore a symbol of unity between the self and the not-self and is evidence that the first vital link is being made between the infant and the outside world. Later the word “mum-mum-mum” will be used to stand for the satisfying experience and the caring person, who is gradually recognized as a person. And so a whole new area for communication is opened up, based on the medium of words, which have to be learned.
CLARE WINNICOTT
Fist published in 1964 in Child Care Quarterly Review, 18 (3). From Kanter, J. (ed.) (2004). Face to Face with Children: The Life and Work of Clare Winnicott. London: Karnac. pp. 184-185
