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3.89 AVERAGE
3.89 AVERAGE
Decided to read this book after reading 'gender born gender made' by Diane Ehrensaft, so i went into it knowing that it's too academic for me and half of it will probably fly over my head , and i was right! The book is hard to read in general not just because of the terms, some ideas and examples make it very obvious that's it's been written decades ago and you better be well versed in psychoanalysis to understand it fully (which i am not). I personally dived into it to learn more about the true self, the false self, and individual creativity and....didn't really succeed, instead i learned new concepts as fantasying, creative living and living itself and of course playing. I feel acutely how little i managed to comprehend and grasp from it, yet i don't think i'll return to it any time soon, because i'm not a fan of psychoanalysis.
I hold Winnicott in high regard. His contributions to psychoanalysis and what we understand about children are invaluable. And there are some beautiful nuggets throughout the book (e.g. p 116 talking about waiting instead of interpreting; p 88 elaborating on the idea of creativity as health). Furthermore, in the last section on adolescence, Winnicott describes developmental processes in such a well thought out and concise fashion. But, alas, I find his style of writing too verbose and jargon-laden to be accessible.
challenging
informative
reflective
slow-paced
Winnicott explores the imaginative and creative life built from our childhood imprints. This creative life grows and is sustained through an interacting self. We speak often of an objective reality or a subjective experience, but Winnicott attends to the interacting self, the experiential self between the found world and our selves. "Playing and Reality" examines the developmental gap between imagination and the grounding of our knowledge. This interactive self begins to know itself, and otherness through object play. A firetruck, a blanket, a string cheese moves across phases. Once identified it transitions from "not-me" to something that I have experienced. If we are one of the lucky ones to have a flourishing childhood, our imagination and play builds kingdoms and empires from everyday objects that have transformed into another reality.
Like Freud, he takes a psychoanalytic perspective that out adulthood well-being is always undergirded by the our childhood imprints. Laddering from individual relationships to culture, and unity of purpose, play becomes profound. Winnicott states "protection of the baby-mother and baby-parent relationship at the early stage of every boy or girl child's development, so that there may come into being the potential space in which, because of trust, the child may creativity play" (p.109). This play never stops. Psychoanalysis offers creativity in the form of exploration between therapist and patient. Winnicott stresses this creativity, is not necessarily artistic, but again related to building meaning and development. In a chapter titled "creativity and its origins" (chapter 5), he stresses what is at stake. "We find either that individuals live creatively and feel that life is worth living or else that they cannot live creatively and are doubtful about the value of living"
All that is to say that Winnicott's work is worth exploring. For the ones like us who have graduated from childhood, there is still work to do, and work to explore potentially as parents. This specific collection may not be best representation of his work though. The clinical language and dated case studies stifle the imaginative beast that is being poked. Also Winnicott quotes his own work multiple times through the book with citations...which seems amusingly self-assured.
Like any science book of the past, it's worth considering if the book still speaks to our times. The black box of the human mind may require an understanding of the biological strictures Given the advances of neuroscience and data processing, we may not take the theories of the psychoanalytic tradition as seriously. I think Winnicott is worth reading still. For parents, he offers the sage advice to be "good-enough" with all it's British understatement and steeliness. His work a profoundly imaginative and humanist perspective on this self-making business. There are parts of this work that feel magnificently modern. Consider one case study, where he works with an patient experiencing a gender identity disturbance. Although the terminology differs from today, Winnicott helps the individual find acceptance in their inner-maleness and inner-femaleness. Further, there is a beautiful closing paragraph about what we owe to our children and really all children. Our position can be to grant generosity to those who help us see the world anew. Indebted to our parents, and our greatest contribution can be to give space and kindness to the ones this world is being built for.
Like Freud, he takes a psychoanalytic perspective that out adulthood well-being is always undergirded by the our childhood imprints. Laddering from individual relationships to culture, and unity of purpose, play becomes profound. Winnicott states "protection of the baby-mother and baby-parent relationship at the early stage of every boy or girl child's development, so that there may come into being the potential space in which, because of trust, the child may creativity play" (p.109). This play never stops. Psychoanalysis offers creativity in the form of exploration between therapist and patient. Winnicott stresses this creativity, is not necessarily artistic, but again related to building meaning and development. In a chapter titled "creativity and its origins" (chapter 5), he stresses what is at stake. "We find either that individuals live creatively and feel that life is worth living or else that they cannot live creatively and are doubtful about the value of living"
All that is to say that Winnicott's work is worth exploring. For the ones like us who have graduated from childhood, there is still work to do, and work to explore potentially as parents. This specific collection may not be best representation of his work though. The clinical language and dated case studies stifle the imaginative beast that is being poked. Also Winnicott quotes his own work multiple times through the book with citations...which seems amusingly self-assured.
Like any science book of the past, it's worth considering if the book still speaks to our times. The black box of the human mind may require an understanding of the biological strictures Given the advances of neuroscience and data processing, we may not take the theories of the psychoanalytic tradition as seriously. I think Winnicott is worth reading still. For parents, he offers the sage advice to be "good-enough" with all it's British understatement and steeliness. His work a profoundly imaginative and humanist perspective on this self-making business. There are parts of this work that feel magnificently modern. Consider one case study, where he works with an patient experiencing a gender identity disturbance. Although the terminology differs from today, Winnicott helps the individual find acceptance in their inner-maleness and inner-femaleness. Further, there is a beautiful closing paragraph about what we owe to our children and really all children. Our position can be to grant generosity to those who help us see the world anew. Indebted to our parents, and our greatest contribution can be to give space and kindness to the ones this world is being built for.
The transitional object is not a sexual object. It's just training wheels to accustom the baby to independence. There's no reason to put Freudian sex stuff into here. More of a piece to provoke thought than to believe in, because there's a lot of valuable ideas here that unfortunately are polluted by Freud.