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The Family and Individual Development
First published in 1968. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
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First published January 1, 1965
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About the author
D.W. Winnicott
123 books413 followersDonald Woods Winnicott was an English pediatrician, psychiatrist, sociologist and psychoanalyst.
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Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews
December 23, 2021
I had been circling around Winnicott for sometime, often finding his ideas quoted and influencing other works regarding child psychology and parenting. I found he was both ahead of his time and time was ahead of him. You can see the bones of concepts that others expand upon, and that a clear diagnostic framework was not available with his use of terms like psychosis and bipolar more abstractions than clear diagnosis.
Winnicott “felt development usually goes well, and that mothers are usually ‘good enough’”(p xvi). “Winnicott always spoke of mothers, and seems to have had a blind spot for the role of father, until close to the end of his life. At the same time, he did increasingly stress that ‘mother’ was a role rather than a biological category, that real mothers had aspect of both genders, and that analysts, biologically male and female, typically play a quasi-maternal role” (p xvii). In this regard Winnicott would fit into the contemporary era, and a ‘mother’ did not have to be female, just a primary attachment object for a child. ‘Mother’ is a role anyone can take and does not necessarily indicate who birthed the child.
Winnicott “seems to assume that mothers will both be able to stay home with their children and want to do so – thus neglecting both the aspiration of women to full political and workplace equality and the economic struggles of poor families” (p xix). I thought when I read this of the mothers that would love to stay home and be full time mothers, but in our current context this is not viable. I have always thought one of the best things we were able to do for our children was have Kerri remain with them until they went to school. That was a massive privilege.
“This sample of the world that is personal to the infant is becoming organized according to complex mechanisms which have as a purpose:
(I) the preservation of what is felt to be ‘good’ – that is to say, acceptable and strengthening to the self (ego);
(ii) the isolation of what is felt to be ‘bad’ – that is to say, unacceptable, persecutor, or injected from external reality without acceptance (trauma);
(iii) the preservation of an area in the personal psychic reality in which objects have living interrelationships, exciting, and even aggressive, as well as affectionate” (p 11).
Winnicott encapsulate and makes simple a lot of our motivations. We want to keep the good, avoid the bad, and we watch and participate with how things interact with each other to sort between the two. Somethings can be both good and bad depending on the context.
“It may be asked, what does the word ‘security’ mean? Certainly parents who are over-protective cause distress in their children, just as parents who cannot be reliable make their children muddled and frightened” (p 42). What I thought of when I read this was the Aristotelian Golden Mean. In our society ‘you cannot be too safe’ is a trope. Actually, you can be too safe. I think from a mental health perspective we over focus on safety, and this is damaging in the long term. A quality of good therapy is the therapist constantly makes mistakes that ruptures the therapeutic relationship. It is a cycle of rupture, repair. Like a muscle, the relationship becomes stronger with time (and the person with it). This is anti-fragility in action.
“The basis for this help is acceptance of the depression, not an urge to cure it. It is just where the individual can allow us to see a place where we can help that we have our chance to give indirect help, remembering that what we are really engaged in is mental nursing in a case of depression” (p 87). You do not need to ‘fix’ anyone, in time they will fix themselves. You do need to sit with them in their trauma and depression. People are allowed to feel like shit. This is supported later when Winnicott describes his friend a marriage counsellor. “she has a temperament which allows her to accept, during the counselling hour, the problem as it is given to her. She does not need to probe to see if the facts are correct and whether the problem is being presented in a one-sided way; she simply takes over whatever comes, and suffers it all. And then the client goes away home somehow feeling different, and often even finding a solution to a problem that had seemed hopeless. Her work is better than that of many who have been given special training. She practically never gives advice, because she does not know what advice to give, and she is not that kind of person” (p 174).
Winnicott rejects a need for the state to have the “legal power to take child except where cruelty and gross neglect awakens society’s conscience” (p 113). The State is a terrible parent and a worse attachment object for a child. A child needs ‘a mother’ (who can be male) to attach too, to form healthy emotional bonds. The State is a poor mother and this should be an accepted and known truth. We should always ask ourselves ‘how bad does a mother need be, before the State is better?’
“We can, however, try to avoid compromising the future. We can try to avoid interfering in the homes that can cope, and are actually coping, with their own individual children and adolescence” (p 236). I think Winnicott was hinting here that where the experts or the state or media can stay out of families, they should stay out. If you are coping avoid the tyranny of experts that know better for your family. My sense is that people have lost a lot of confidence in their ability to parent and all to easily turn to experts. The difference between influence and power. Maybe use experts to influence what you are doing as a parent, however you sort the wheat from the chaff. You are the expert on your own child. You have been with them since the beginning and watched them grow. If you are coping, keep coping and maybe use what is useful from the experts to build on what you are already doing.
I found Winnicott in favour of attachment parenting styles and wrote against what I understand was the regimental approach to feeding and parenting. We went down this path with Michael and tried to create a Gina Ford baby. To my fault I treated Gina Ford’s book like a manual. I can understand and lived the desire to take control of a babies life. I was wrong. I was a naive and an anxious new parent wanting something to cling to in my parenting journey. In the end we were ‘good enough’ as parents and what we learned from Michael, Daniel and Melanie benefited from. We saved a pile of new and different mistakes for them.
I found this an interesting read and can see where a lot of idea grew from regarding child development (and that we have not grown that far). I feel we have a tendency to over complicate parenting. The concept of ‘good enough’ is an important in an era where to many people feel guilty for not being perfect. I am pleased my children are now referring to things and events on their lives as ‘good enough’. Good enough is where the Aristotelian Golden Mean is located. Good enough avoids the perils of perfection and the vacuum of neglect. To paraphrase Judith Rich-Harris ‘stop being so hard on your self and your children. Sit back and enjoy this relationship. Both laugh with and at them. Children are only fragile if you treat them that way. You are going make mistakes, but they are a necessary part of the rupture – repair cycle that builds lots of psychological good. The important thing is to acknowledge mistake when made, because you are all too human. Others now stand on Winnicott’s shoulders and have taken his ideas and made refined versions of them their own. Useful to read for me, but I would not recommend to others unless they have a burning passion.
Winnicott “felt development usually goes well, and that mothers are usually ‘good enough’”(p xvi). “Winnicott always spoke of mothers, and seems to have had a blind spot for the role of father, until close to the end of his life. At the same time, he did increasingly stress that ‘mother’ was a role rather than a biological category, that real mothers had aspect of both genders, and that analysts, biologically male and female, typically play a quasi-maternal role” (p xvii). In this regard Winnicott would fit into the contemporary era, and a ‘mother’ did not have to be female, just a primary attachment object for a child. ‘Mother’ is a role anyone can take and does not necessarily indicate who birthed the child.
Winnicott “seems to assume that mothers will both be able to stay home with their children and want to do so – thus neglecting both the aspiration of women to full political and workplace equality and the economic struggles of poor families” (p xix). I thought when I read this of the mothers that would love to stay home and be full time mothers, but in our current context this is not viable. I have always thought one of the best things we were able to do for our children was have Kerri remain with them until they went to school. That was a massive privilege.
“This sample of the world that is personal to the infant is becoming organized according to complex mechanisms which have as a purpose:
(I) the preservation of what is felt to be ‘good’ – that is to say, acceptable and strengthening to the self (ego);
(ii) the isolation of what is felt to be ‘bad’ – that is to say, unacceptable, persecutor, or injected from external reality without acceptance (trauma);
(iii) the preservation of an area in the personal psychic reality in which objects have living interrelationships, exciting, and even aggressive, as well as affectionate” (p 11).
Winnicott encapsulate and makes simple a lot of our motivations. We want to keep the good, avoid the bad, and we watch and participate with how things interact with each other to sort between the two. Somethings can be both good and bad depending on the context.
“It may be asked, what does the word ‘security’ mean? Certainly parents who are over-protective cause distress in their children, just as parents who cannot be reliable make their children muddled and frightened” (p 42). What I thought of when I read this was the Aristotelian Golden Mean. In our society ‘you cannot be too safe’ is a trope. Actually, you can be too safe. I think from a mental health perspective we over focus on safety, and this is damaging in the long term. A quality of good therapy is the therapist constantly makes mistakes that ruptures the therapeutic relationship. It is a cycle of rupture, repair. Like a muscle, the relationship becomes stronger with time (and the person with it). This is anti-fragility in action.
“The basis for this help is acceptance of the depression, not an urge to cure it. It is just where the individual can allow us to see a place where we can help that we have our chance to give indirect help, remembering that what we are really engaged in is mental nursing in a case of depression” (p 87). You do not need to ‘fix’ anyone, in time they will fix themselves. You do need to sit with them in their trauma and depression. People are allowed to feel like shit. This is supported later when Winnicott describes his friend a marriage counsellor. “she has a temperament which allows her to accept, during the counselling hour, the problem as it is given to her. She does not need to probe to see if the facts are correct and whether the problem is being presented in a one-sided way; she simply takes over whatever comes, and suffers it all. And then the client goes away home somehow feeling different, and often even finding a solution to a problem that had seemed hopeless. Her work is better than that of many who have been given special training. She practically never gives advice, because she does not know what advice to give, and she is not that kind of person” (p 174).
Winnicott rejects a need for the state to have the “legal power to take child except where cruelty and gross neglect awakens society’s conscience” (p 113). The State is a terrible parent and a worse attachment object for a child. A child needs ‘a mother’ (who can be male) to attach too, to form healthy emotional bonds. The State is a poor mother and this should be an accepted and known truth. We should always ask ourselves ‘how bad does a mother need be, before the State is better?’
“We can, however, try to avoid compromising the future. We can try to avoid interfering in the homes that can cope, and are actually coping, with their own individual children and adolescence” (p 236). I think Winnicott was hinting here that where the experts or the state or media can stay out of families, they should stay out. If you are coping avoid the tyranny of experts that know better for your family. My sense is that people have lost a lot of confidence in their ability to parent and all to easily turn to experts. The difference between influence and power. Maybe use experts to influence what you are doing as a parent, however you sort the wheat from the chaff. You are the expert on your own child. You have been with them since the beginning and watched them grow. If you are coping, keep coping and maybe use what is useful from the experts to build on what you are already doing.
I found Winnicott in favour of attachment parenting styles and wrote against what I understand was the regimental approach to feeding and parenting. We went down this path with Michael and tried to create a Gina Ford baby. To my fault I treated Gina Ford’s book like a manual. I can understand and lived the desire to take control of a babies life. I was wrong. I was a naive and an anxious new parent wanting something to cling to in my parenting journey. In the end we were ‘good enough’ as parents and what we learned from Michael, Daniel and Melanie benefited from. We saved a pile of new and different mistakes for them.
I found this an interesting read and can see where a lot of idea grew from regarding child development (and that we have not grown that far). I feel we have a tendency to over complicate parenting. The concept of ‘good enough’ is an important in an era where to many people feel guilty for not being perfect. I am pleased my children are now referring to things and events on their lives as ‘good enough’. Good enough is where the Aristotelian Golden Mean is located. Good enough avoids the perils of perfection and the vacuum of neglect. To paraphrase Judith Rich-Harris ‘stop being so hard on your self and your children. Sit back and enjoy this relationship. Both laugh with and at them. Children are only fragile if you treat them that way. You are going make mistakes, but they are a necessary part of the rupture – repair cycle that builds lots of psychological good. The important thing is to acknowledge mistake when made, because you are all too human. Others now stand on Winnicott’s shoulders and have taken his ideas and made refined versions of them their own. Useful to read for me, but I would not recommend to others unless they have a burning passion.
September 7, 2025
It’s goes without saying that Winnicott is one of the founding voices in family and individual development and his concept of ‘good enough’ parenting is fundamental to the approach taken to positive parenting and away from the need to be perfect to be attuned. The concept of rupture and repair is highlighted here. Winnicott’s points on the stages of development and what a child goes through from total dependence on mother (identified as parent more generally but usually the mother) to steps forward, and how mental illness or anti-social behaviour in young people can manifest in childhood exposure to a ‘not good enough’ environment, particularly where there is parental illness or conflict. However, Winnicott had a very harsh mentality for some children assessed as ‘too damage’ for foster care, and needing to be placed in group homes where they are cared for the extent that they are in a holding pattern into adulthood, believing that some people without any family or warmth in childhood will not be able to learn to be productive members of society. There are good points to these thoughts, however it is founded in the mentality of the 20th century that maintains patriarchal views of motherhood and a general punitive approach to anti-social behaviour, and has a fatalist approach to some children depending to their early life. However the point that is strongest in this work is that the environment a child grows up in is a predictor of their development, and that a ‘good enough’ environment and parenting is a sufficient starting point.
February 25, 2020
I'm a huge admirer of Winnicott, although with major progress in the diagnosis and treatment of mental health his ideas are a little dated, his theories and update on the Freudian school of thought remain relevant and important. This work really should be dealt with by reading what is important, and ignoring some of the fluffier stuff (his chapter on democracy has a few great snippets but on the whole doesn't feel particularly relevant to modern theory).
A great man, a good book. Lots of info on family development, particularly in more dysfunctional cases.
A great man, a good book. Lots of info on family development, particularly in more dysfunctional cases.
July 15, 2023
Winnicott alanında deha kabul edilen bir psikanalist. Özellikle çocuk psikolojisi üzerine çalışmalar yapmış ve çocukluktaki geçiş nesnesi kavramını ortaya koymuş. Bazı tespitlerini isabetli bulmuş olsam da zamanı geçmiş, miadını doldurmuş fikirleri olduğunu düşünmeden edemedim. Kendisi iki evlilik yapmış ve çocuk sahibi olmayı tercih etmemiş birisi. Çocuklarla ilgili çalışmalarını bazı noktalarda çok katı bulduğumu itiraf etmeliyim. Psikoz sahibi, depresif ebeveynlere sahip çocuklara sosyal hizmetler tarafından el konulması gerektiği gibi düşünceleri suistimale çok açık.
June 9, 2023
As his collected papers, some interesting annotations here and there about children and human development but nothing too extraordinary.
That said, any pediatrician has to read this.
His best text in this work is the 16th paper 'The Deprived Child': Winnicott makes an excellent critique of the capitalist system (without knowing it) of how some institutions and enterprises tend to discredit social workers so they can have children working on factories and in domestic sevices.
That said, any pediatrician has to read this.
His best text in this work is the 16th paper 'The Deprived Child': Winnicott makes an excellent critique of the capitalist system (without knowing it) of how some institutions and enterprises tend to discredit social workers so they can have children working on factories and in domestic sevices.
September 18, 2018
Excepcional.
August 8, 2020
Effortless Winnicott. If we all thought like Winnicott, the world would be better for it.
January 1, 2023
Çeviriyle ilgili çok sıkıntılar var
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June 12, 2013The key word in this book is still emotional development. Winnicott this book presents the importance of family in child development and how it needs to be nourished by the safety of the home environment.
Displaying 1 - 9 of 9 reviews