Winnicott ePrints. Revista Internacional de Psicanálise Winnicottiana

Adolescence and psychosis

Elsa Oliveira Dias — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0200

From the perspective of Winnicott, thisstudy aims to show that it is possible, although not easy, to identify whether a particular adolescent is ill or merely manifests characteristics of his/her age. The nature of the anxieties that afflict the adolescent, especially the one whohas had a good start, helps us to understand psychotic anxieties: on abandoning the well-known territory of the family world and entering a wider one, the adolescent is exposed to primitive anxieties. He/she does not yet feel at home in a pubertal body, which is overwhelmed by instincts and endowed with a new, frightening potency, and barely knows of him/herselfand his/her identity in this new situation between the recently abandoned childhood and the adult world awaiting with expectations. During this more or less long interregnum, the adolescent suffers from unreality, doldrums and struggles to feel real. He/she is driven by an inflexible morality, not in terms of what has been socially established as good or evil –which is precisely what he/she despises,and against which he/she rebels –but in terms of what is felt as real and what is felt as false, which approaches him/her of schizoidia.

Winnicott With Lacan: Towards a New Middle Group?

Deborah Luepnitz — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0200

Winnicott with Lacan: towards a new Middle Group? During the second half of the 20th century, many psychoanalysts aligned themselves with either Donald Winnicott – and the British school – or with the French school of Jacques Lacan. Avoidance of the other tradition seemed almost phobic. In the past two decades, however, interest has grown in reading these two great analysts together. It has been said that Winnicott introduced the comic tradition into psychoanalysis (as demonstrated in his emphasis on play, and more generally in his meliorism). Lacan, in contrast, sustained Freud’s tragic vision (as demonstrated in teachings such as “The sexual relation does not exist” and in placing the analyst in the position of death). Lacan’s followers have been criticized for offering too little environmental provision to his patients, and ignoring counter transference, while Winnicott’s followers have been criticized for overvaluing the counter transference and ignoring the role of language in psychic life. Thus, in some ways, the theories of Winnicott and Lacan appear to be complementary and mutually limiting. The point of this paper, however, is not to suggest combining them in order to produce some new “total” theory. The purpose is to enhance teaching and practice by learning from both Winnicott, the analyst of devotion, and Lacan, the analyst of desire.

D. W. Winnicott Evolving and Continuing: A Consideration of Winnicott’s Implicit Theories of Thinking and Influence

Margaret Boyle Spelman — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0200

Following the death of a prolific thinker and writer such as D. W. Winnicott, who was not a participant in any school of psychoanalytic thought and who eschewed any formal following of his own thinking, it is a valid question to ask whether or not his thinking dies with him or does it continue to have a discernible presence and growth in anyone else’s thinking, and if so, what form does that presence take? This paper outlines the questions asked and the method used in my study undertaken to look at the evolution of Winnicott’s thinking during his lifetime and since his passing in a further two generations of his analytic family. It discusses the identifi ed ‘facilitating features’ of Winnicott’s thinking and explores the implications arising from these features.

The concept of health in the primitive stages on Winnicott’s maturational processtheory: the absolute dependence

Fernanda Cristina Dias — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0200

The current article has the objectiveof addressingthe concept of health in the Winnicott’s maturational process theoryfocusing on the primitive stages. Therefore, the following aspects were considered: the intrauterine events; the birth experience thatdenotes what Winnicott called as the first awakening;and the events that comprehend thetheoretical first feed, after the birth. These events all together comprehend the absolute dependence stage. This article intends to identify the conquers related to this stage on the health perspective as well as the necessary conditions for them to happen and provide the continuity of beingtowards the followingstages of relative dependence, towards the independence and relative independence.

Guilt, hateand hospital: a case study according to Winnicott’s view

André Augusto Rossi, Silvia Mayumi Gradvohl — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0200

This article presents a case study performed through a supervised internship in health psychology. It is facilitation of elaborationof aguilt and hatesituation experienced between a patient and her companion met by an intern in the hospital context, in the light of Winnicott’s psychoanalysis. The possibilities and limits of psychological intervention are shownand the way in which intervention can be performed is highlighted in order to foster personal maturation without being intrusive, respecting the singularity of individuals attended.

The future of psychoanalysis: a search for evidence?

Marcos Fontoni — Fri, 23 Dec 2016 00:00:00 -0200

Several countries have already adopted the Evidence-Based Medicine model in order to set the way the resources are going to be spentin public health care. If a medical procedure or treatment has no proof of its efficacy obtained through experimental methods where a sufficient number of patients were tested, their usage is not recommended or approved. In this scenario, psychoanalysis faces a difficulty to present its results in a large scale as this model of science requires. In this article I take Winnicott’s ideas as guidelines to present the critics of other authors about this subject, in order to discuss its applicability. The conclusion is not clear because Winnicott himself has no definitive statement about it. However, we can take for granted that the search for evidence is now a matter of public healt hand not only an internal problem of psychoanalysis. This means that we must strive to improve research in psychoanalysis beyond the individual patient analysis method.