In a remembrance of the writer Harold Pinter that appeared in the Los Angeles Times (and posted on Slow Painting), Charles McNulty included a memorable quote by D. W. Winnicott:
But for all his vehemence and posturing, Pinter was too gifted with words and too astute a critic to be dismissed as an ideological crank. He was also too deft a psychologist, understanding what the British psychoanalyst D.W. Winnicott meant when he wrote that “being weak is as aggressive as the attack of the strong on the weak” and that the repressive denial of personal aggressiveness is perhaps even more dangerous than ranting and raving. (All that stiff-upper-lip business can be murderous.)
D. W. Winnicott
Ah, that Winnicott wisdom. I’m not a student of his psychological theories, so many of you know his oeuvre much better than I do. But I am always provoked when I run into references to his work because of his ability to hit the deep spots where truth rings and you can feel it in your body.
Here’s another quote by him, one that I have referenced and thought about many, many times. This is one of the most apt and succinct descriptions of the quixotic quality of the artistic nature I have ever read:
Artists are continually torn between the urgent need to communicate, and the still more urgent need not to be found.
I spent some time this morning searching for more Winnicottisms. Among other references, I found a lengthy essay called Pictorial Space throughout Art History: Cézanne and Hofmann, by Maxson J. McDowell. This piece has more to offer than a few pithy provocations from Winnicott, so I’ve included a few apropos excerpts here. The author’s correlation of the visual model for individuation with Jung’s hero’s journey has had me thinking all morning about what that idea could mean. Worth sharing here, to be sure.
Pictorial space represents a visual model of individuation. While the myth of the journey models the process of individuation, pictorial space models the structural changes which are the results of individuation. We are more accustomed to describing individuation as a process, perhaps because our thinking is informed by the myth of the journey. When we look for structural changes in the personality, however, we find some that are characteristic.
Winnicott has described similar structural changes though he emphasized that, under favorable conditions, these changes begin in childhood. Like Jung, Winnicott linked these changes to originality and creativity. As mentioned earlier, Winnicott said that an [individuating] personality acquires ‘depth’, ‘an interior space to put beliefs in’, ‘an inside, a space where things can be held’, ‘the capacity to accept paradox’ (to contain opposites), ‘both room and strength’, and both ‘originality and the acceptance of tradition as the basis for invention’…
A person becomes more individual when he or she forms an individual relationship with the unconscious. He or she organizes more around inner reality and less around learned attitudes. Winnicott said that depth includes a ‘respect for … the substance of illusion’ by which he meant inner reality.
The parallels between Winnicott’s interior space, Jung’s individuation and pictorial space are too deep to be mere analogies. An evolving personality and an evolving plastic painting are apparently homologous systems organized according to a common set of principles. A plastic painting makes tangible a process which, in the personality, is slow and obscure: it models or symbolizes the structure towards which individuation tends. In part, this is why it moves us so deeply. Plastic art was first created more than 35,000 years ago. Just as we have always used myth to represent the inner life, so we have always used plastic art for the same purpose.
I’ve always liked this Winnicott idea — although typically psychoanalytic — of all culture — art, literature and religion — deriving from the first symbol of the mother-child relationship: the transitional object or toy (like “blankey”) that comes to reassure him of his mother’s existence when he is anxious.
It’s interesting that though Winnicott is always remembered for his important concept of the transitional object, (the child’s first “creation” — the child creates the power of the object, not the thing itself)) many people are not familiar with his more encompassing idea of transitional space. Briefly his concept is this: there are three kinds of space, though we are accustomed to thinking in terms of two: inner “personal” space and the outer space of the wider world. Winnicott says there is a third: the space between — the intimate space in which the mother-child relationship is conducted, enacted, transacted. This transitional space is also the space of imaginative play, and eventually the space of art-making.
I could go on and on, I think this idea is so important. When the transitional space collapses, bad things happen — play and art and any hope of joy or wholeness disappear.
Just as an aside, i always thought that Winnicott’s own transitional object — his teddy or blankie or whatever it was (I vaguely remember him writing about a rag doll), would be a powerful and magical thing, even today. I imagine it in a museum, in its own vitrine.
Two of my smartest readers, Sally and QS, thank you. I have always wanted to know more about W, and your comments make it clear there is a lot to mine. I love the third space concept, not unlike the “third thing” that Donald Hall wrote about in relation to his marriage. (I posted an excerpt here several months ago.)
Lots to think about on this wintry last day of my annus horribilis, 2008. I’m ready for something new, a de-collapsing if you will of that transitional space. Worm holes? Trap doors? I’m looking…
Hmm. This “third thing” gets more and more interesting. Add to Donald Hall and Winnicott’s concepts, the Jungian idea (I think it’s Jung, but I could be wrong, and I haven’t looked it up) of the “transcendent third” having to do with the idea of false dichotomy. We often feel that we must choose between two things, neither of which feels quite right. But if we can “hold the opposites” long enough, without forcing ourselves to choose, the transcendent third may appear.
Great add, Sally. Third things. I’ve been thinking about that metaphysic as we begin anew. How does it show up politically? Economically? In the sphere of social justice? Thanks for this.
I’m grateful for all of the above recapitulations of the
essential Winnicut. They reminded/helped
me to restore some of the damaged concepts/insights,
I worked on so hard with a Winnicotian informed therapist
of a few years ago: which unfortunately ended very
traumaticaly for me: the wisdom of which then being lost or repressed in anger.
I am an artist: a writer and the reference to the need to
hide as much as too communicate explains much to me.
Also the consequences of the collapse of the third space between mother and child as the provenance
of orginality and invention-I should suspect terror and
clinging filing the need for this and concommitant peace
of mind. In any case all helped in so many ways.
In searching for another therapist-though residually
sick of them all-I find such an enormous near universal
ignorance/want of erudition of thinkers like Winnicut(if
there be such a thing). Perhaps because it requires a
certain brillance and originality to appreciate their’s
and I suspect a rigid, petty orthodoxy dominated by
intellectual red tape to comprise the wide ranging
syllabus that would include him.
In fact I find a general/tragic lack of brillancy among
psychoanalysts/certainly psychiatrists/and demi-therapists
of all kinds. Most seem cookie cutter clones incapable
of independent/eclectic thinking. And would very much
appreciate at my personal e-mail any suggestions even
individual referals. Thanks all once again for the personal
indulgence.
[…] so many themes and ideas that I find compelling—the work of D. W. Winnicott (a post about him here), the inestimable theatrical genius Patsy Rodenburg, the ineffable connection we can feel with […]