D.W.

Winnicott

Object Relations,
Annihilation Anxiety, & Transitional
Objects
 Donald Woods Winnicott
Object Relations

*pediatrician & child analyst

*influenced by Melanie Klein

*the capacity for concern and to feel

guilty were psychological
achievements

*parted ways with Klein because she

seemed to pathologize what
Winnicott saw as normal
developmental processes

*consultation model (spatula &

squiggle techniques)

*role of annihilation anxiety

&transitional objects
 Overview
(1) “Life is normally difficult”

(2) Meaning of symptoms

(3) World of “ordinary life”

(4) Modification of the “Self-Other”

continuum (Kohut)
Capacity to Pity
 Personality Development
*First 5 or 6 months of life – child achieves a series
of important cognitive & emotional developments

(1) personality integration

(2) Personalization

(3) realization
 Winnicott’s Quote
Regarding “Realization”
‘A baby cannot exist alone but is essentially a part of a
relationship: the “nursing couple’”. Babies can be understood
psychologically only in relation to their environments:
“ordinary devoted mother”. The “ordinary devoted mother”
provides a specific adaptive context for her newborn to
flourish and mature (a.k.a. primary maternal preoccupation).
The mother can empathically put herself in her infant’s place
(close identification). Mother’s heightened empathy permits
silent communication which allows the infants “innate
equipment”(referring to Ego Psychology ideas) to unfold.’
 Key Terms

• “Good enough” mothering

• Annihilation anxiety
• “Going on being”
• Sources of external impingements
• Problems can result in the origins of the
“false self”
• The “mask of the false self”
 5 Levels of the False Self
(1) Extremely Maladaptive (Mask)

(2) Moderately Maladaptive (Caretaker)

(3) Minimally Adaptive (Defender)

(4) Moderately Adaptive (Imitator)

(5) Adaptive (Facilitator)

 True Self
• sense of feeling “alive” in one’s body (“experience of aliveness”)
• grows more complex over time
• life’s difficulties (brief separations, illness, socialization) are taken “in
stride”
• develop the normal “false self” or social mask (have both a public and
private self)
• false self is a sublimation of the true self rather than its defender
• when the “gap” between true and false self is great, difficulties may arise:
(true self may not be able to communicate accurately)

• Problem: greatest danger is if the false self is too successful – it can hide
the true self (ironic because the successful false self is who others think is
the real person) – then the true self potentials are buried and the person
is not whole (can result in annihilation experience)
 Transitional Objects
• the child assumes rights over the object
• affectionately cuddled, love, mutilated
• must never change (unless by the infant)
• must survive instinctual loving and hating
(aggression)
• give warmth or move or have texture
• has vitality of its own (reality of its own)
• not a hallucination
• gradually decathected (not repressed, not
mourned, not forgotten) – loses meaning