Asociación Europea de Historia del Psicoanálisis
Barcelona October 20th 2012
WINNICOTT’S LAST WORD ON THE DEATH INSTINCT
A consideration of Winnicott’s theory of aggression and an interpretation of
its clinical implications
Jan Abram
Prelude
In the early days of 1971 Winnicott booked a room at the Hotel Sacher, Vienna for the
last week of July. He was planning to attend the 27th Congress of the International
Psychoanalytical Association which was to be held in Vienna that year. The theme was
on: ‘The psychoanalytical concept of aggression: theoretical, clinical and applied
aspects’. Winnicott had been invited to speak on a panel entitled ‘The Role of Aggression
in Child Analysis.’ But, sadly, it was a Congress that he was destined not to attend. He
died on January 25th 1971.
In the Winnicott archives, in a file marked (in Clare Winnicott’s hand [his wife of twenty
years]) – ‘DWW’s Notes for the Vienna Congress never given’ - there are a set of
unpublished notes, in Winnicott’s hand. The notes comprise of hand written sheets in
with instructions (in the top left hand corner) for his secretary (Joyce Coles). The typed
pages correlate exactly with his instructions and offer a clear sequence of statements
that were (presumably) to serve as his plan for the paper he would present on that
panel.
An examination of the notes, compared and contrasted with key papers of the previous
two years, show further clarification on Winnicott’s late formulations. The trajectory of
the notes pass through several of Winnicott’s major themes in his work: dissociation,
hate, male and female elements, regression and aggression related to his concept of
The use of an object.
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I am suggesting that the notes of this unwritten paper stand as Winnicott’s ‘last word’
and offer a consolidatory advance to his final theoretical conclusions on the
psychoanalytic concept of aggression. I aim to show that while Winnicott’s work as a
whole creates a distinctive new paradigm in the history of psychoanalysis, (and that this
constitutes a Kuhnian scientific revolution), it does not negate Freudian principles. His
disagreement with Freud’s concept of the death instinct was related to the clinical
evidence of his analytic work (with adults and children). In my clinical example I hope to
illustrate how Freud’s oedipal matrix functions with Winnicott’s parent-infant matrix.
The use of an object
To use an object the subject must have developed a capacity to use objects . . . This
capacity cannot be said to be inborn, nor can its development in an individual be taken
for granted. The development of a capacity to use an object is another example of the
maturational process as something that depends on a facilitating environment.
(Winnicott 1969: 713)
The New York Psychoanalytic Society
Summary of paper to be presented on Tuesday, November 12,1968, The use of an
object by Dr. D. W. Winnicott (London)
Object relating can be described in terms of the experience of the subject. Description of
object-usage involves consideration of the nature of the object. I am offering for
discussion the reasons why, in my opinion, a capacity to use an object is more
sophisticated than a capacity to relate to objects; and relating may be to a subjective
object, but usage implies that the object is part of external reality.
This sequence can be observed:
1. Subject relates to object.
2. Object is in process of being found instead of placed by the subject
in the world.
3. Subject destroys object.
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4. Object survives destruction.
5. Subject can use object.
The object is always being destroyed. This destruction becomes the unconscious
backcloth for love of a real object, that is, an object outside the area of the subject’s
omnipotent control.
Study of this problem involves a statement of the positive value of destructiveness. The
destructiveness plus the object’s survival of the destruction places the object outside the
area in which projective mental mechanisms operate, so that a world of shared reality is
created which the subject can use and which can feed back into the subject.
How this usage develops naturally out of play with the object is the theme of this talk.
It would help in my exposition if a reading of the following papers
could be taken for granted:
1. (1966) The Location of Cultural Experience. Int. J. Psa. 48: 3,
368–72
2. (1962) Hogarth Press, London, 1965. Ego Integration in Child
Development, (Chapter 4 in: The Maturational Processes and the
Facilitating Environment) N.Y. I.U.P. – 1965, pp. 56–63
3. The Capacity to be Alone. Int. J. Psa. 39: 5, 416–20, 1958
4. Playing: Its Theoretical Status in the Clinical Situation. Int. J. Psa.
V. 49, 1968 – still in press
10/29/68
The added footnote: a clue
In 1970, Winnicott added a footnote to the manuscript of his book Human Nature, to
the effect that the issue of ‘recognition of the destructive element in the crude primitive
excited idea’ was resolved when he wrote ‘The use of an object.’ This footnote, I
suggest, indicates that it was the notion of the object’s psychic survival that had
answered his question related to how the infant could move from apperception to
perception; from pre-ruth to ruth (Winnicott 1988: 79).
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From the ‘Summary’ reproduced above it is clear that Winnicott hoped his audience
would have already accepted, or at least0understood, many of his previous arguments
that set the stage for his new formulation because he felt he had resolved the problem
of defining the fate of the primitive love impulse.
Winnicott’s formulations preceding 1968
The papers Winnicott recommends are not listed in chronological order, which suggests
that he wished to emphasize an order of importance.
In the following I highlight the salient concepts of each paper in an attempt to track
Winnicott’s trajectory up to that point in 1968.
All these concepts are intrinsically related to his theory of psychic survival.
1. In the ‘Location of Cultural Experience’ (1966), Winnicott posits a ‘potential space’
which, for the baby, is located in between the subjective object and the object
objectively perceived. ‘From the beginning the baby has maximally intense experiences
in the potential space between the subjective object and the object objectively
perceived, between me-extensions and the not-me’ (Winnicott 1971a: 100)
[italics in original].
2. Earlier, in 1962, Winnicott had offered a departure from Freud by stating that the
newborn’s ego, distinct from the self, was provided by the mother in her state of
primary maternal preoccupation – ego-relatedness. This is why he states, ‘There is no id
before ego.’ Therefore, at the very beginning ‘. . . instinctual life can be ignored,
because the infant is not yet an entity having experiences’ (Winnicott 1962: 56). A self
has to be in place before the infant is able to ‘experience’ otherwise s/he can only
‘react,’ which constitutes trauma.
3. Winnicott had introduced the term ego-relatedness in 1956 to describe the phase of
absolute dependence when the baby is merged with the mother and benefits from egocoverage that emanates from the mother’s primary maternal preoccupation. In his paper
on ‘The capacity to be alone’ (1958b) he had stated that this capacity was based on the
introjection of an ‘ego-supportive environment’ – a consequence of the early good
enough mother’s attention and adaptation i.e. ego-coverage.
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In Klein’s theory this indicated the existence of a good internal object and in Freud’s
theory it indicated an ability to tolerate theh‘. . . feelings aroused by the primal scene.’
Winnicott’s emphasis is that the introjection of the good internal object and the
resolution of the Oedipus complex could not occur without the ‘introjection
of an ego-supportive environment’ having already occurred from the start. The capacity
to be alone is based on the paradox of being alone in the ‘presence of mother’
(Winnicott 1958b: 30).
4. The theory of playing was present in Winnicott’s early paediatric work when he
discovered in the 1930s that the ‘spatula game’ could be used as a way of assessing the
infant’s emotional difficulties in first consultations (Winnicott 1941: 229–49). Later, the
‘squiggle game’ became a natural successor to the earlier game for toddlers, as well as a
helpful diagnostic tool for children and adolescents. In 1942, Winnicott had already
observed that the ‘. . . child values finding that hate or aggressive urges can be
expressed in a known environment, without the return of hate and violence from the
environment to the child’ (Winnicott 1942: 43). Here we find the very theme of the
subject’s attack and the object’s tolerance that would begin to crystallize in the papers
of 1968. The critique of psychoanalytic technique is also raised (as it is in ‘The use of an
object’), and Winnicott is unequivocal that ‘. . . interpretation outside the ripeness of the
material is indoctrination . . . a corollary is that resistance arises out of interpretation
given outside the area of overlap of the patient’s and analyst’s playing together’
(Winnicott, [1967] 1968: 597).
The above four papers show how Winnicott’s re-formulations were moving towards a
‘paradigm shift’ in psychoanalysis (Chapter 4). It does not imply that instinct theory is
irrelevant in Winnicott’s formulations but rather that, from the infant’s point of view, the
instinctual/biological impulse might just as well be an external clap of thunder before the
sense of self could develop; and a sense of self will only come about through a psychic
environment capable of meeting the infant’s biological and emotional needs (Winnicott
1965d: 141).
Winnicott felt ‘something was wrong somewhere’ in classical Freudian theory: ‘There is a
phase prior to that which makes sense of the concept of fusion’ (ibid.: 239). In his
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original thesis in 1939, aggression in the infant was primary and simply ‘muscle erotism,’
and a ‘symptom of being alive,’ ‘. . . and had nothing to do with anger,’ let alone hate,
sadism and envy. By the last decade of his work he used the term ‘destructive,’ but both
words – ‘aggression’ and ‘destruction’ - signify a benign force in the infant at the
beginning (although the word ‘destruction,’ as we shall see, takes on a supplementary
meaning in his final formulation).
(In ‘Metapsychological and clinical aspects aspects of regression within the
psychoanalytic set up’ (1955a),
Winnicott argued that Freud took for granted the early good enough environment, and
that his work with neurotics, therefore, meant that he did not have the clinical data that
analysts with borderline patients discover (cf. Raphael-Leff 2007a). In ‘The use of an
object in the context of Moses and Monotheism,’ Winnicott reiterates this point, stating
that this is the reason that Freud did not theorize about the pre-fusion stage and the
question of how the infant develops a capacity to think symbolically (Winnicott 1989a:
240–6). It is in this very late paper that Winnicott introduces a new thought when he
suggests that the father has an important role at this pre-fusion stage of the subject’s
psychic life (Abram 2007a: 38). The father’s imago, he suggests, starts off as a whole
object in the infant’s psyche as a presence in mother’s mind, i.e. the fact of the parental
intercourse (ibid.: 39). I suggest that this notion advances the concept of primary
maternal preoccupation because Winnicott states that the ‘father as a whole object at
the beginning’ constitutes an integrative force in the infant – a clear suggestion that the
father (in mother’s mind during her state of primary maternal preoccupation) is
transmitted and internalized by the infant, which will lead to an ego capacity [my italics].
Indeed, it seems clear that without the father in mother’s mind there is no such thing as
survival of the object in Winnicott’s theory (cf. Green [1996] 2000).
Although it can be seen that Winnicott has observed this fact and has written about it
extensively from 1937 until 1968, it is only in the conceptualizing of ‘the use of an
object’ that he can clearly state that the survival of the object is a new feature in his
formulations. In other words, the capacity to think symbolically and to reach a position
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in which the ‘Other’ is perceived as truly separate, not just a ‘bundle of projections,’ is
entirely contingent on the survival of the object from the very beginning when the baby
is not able to differentiate between Me and Not-me.
Indeed, the capacity to discern is contingent on the original survival of the object – the
‘theoretical beginning.’ Winnicott refers to the ‘summation of beginnings’ which he
describes as an ‘accumulation of beginnings’ that go to make up a ‘theoretical beginning’
(Winnicott [1954] 1955a: 283). Perhaps the pinnacle of development, at the point of
death, if still psychically alive, we could think of as the ‘summation of endings.’
Illusion (of omnipotence)
Primary creativity, the theoretical first feed, and creating the object
To elaborate further on Winnicott’s formulations on the ‘stage of pre-fusion,’ let us
briefly look at three of the key related concepts that he had already outlined before
1968 – primary creativity, the theoretical first feed, and creating the object (Abram
2007a: 114 and 209). This discussion is aimed at an illumination of the core concept in
‘The use of an object’ and will hopefully lead on to an understanding of how and why it
offers an alternative theory to the death instinct.
As we saw above, for Winnicott, the Freudian theory of fusion of the instincts could only
occur after the establishment of ‘unit status’ or a ‘unit self’ (Winnicott 1955b and 1962).
This stage cannot occur in the infant before the age of three or four months. And, as we
have seen, the establishment of a self was contingent on the mother’s survival of her
infant’s ruthless, destructive love. Winnicott emphasizes that it is the biological need in
the baby that has to be attended to by the emotionality of the m/other/psychicenvironment; and it is this attending to the infant’s biological need (which at the very
early stage of life is not separable from emotional need), through the mother’s
emotional response, that will constitute what Winnicott describes as the ‘theoretical first
feed.’
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The theoretical first feed is represented in real life by the summation of the early
experiences of many feeds. After the theoretical first feed the baby begins to have
material with which to create. (Winnicott [1953] 1988: 106)
Following Freud, Winnicott sees that the baby is born into the world equipped with a
creative potential. This ‘inherited tendency,’ described as a predisposition to grow, is
bound up with the sensations in the body and the baby’s absolute dependence. The
mother’s ability to recognize her baby’s predicament enables her to adapt to his needs,
e.g. offering her breast when he cries. Winnicott stresses that the mother’s adaptation
has to involve the mother’s desire and enjoyment in order to provide what the baby
needs through her deep ‘primary maternal preoccupation’ – an intense and unconscious
identification with her baby’s predicament of absolute dependence (1956). This
very first contact between mother and infant is the beginning of a gradual building up of
the baby’s ‘illusion of omnipotence’ which means that, from the baby’s point of view, his
need (hunger) creates the breast (food). Winnicott sees this as a crucial moment that
constitutes the foundations for all further development. The mother’s ability to adapt to
her baby’s needs facilitates in the baby/subject the ‘illusion of omnipotence.’ This
experience is a necessary aspect of what he describes as ‘the theoretical first feed.’
‘At least until we know more I must assume that there is creative potential, and that at
the theoretical first feed the baby has a personal contribution to make. If the mother
adapts well enough the baby assumes the nipple and the milk are the results of a
gesture that arose out of need, the result of an idea that rode in on a crest
of a wave of instinctual tension’ (Winnicott [1953] 1988: 110)
The wave of instinctual tension is, for example, the sensation of hunger (or any other
biological impulse). Hunger that is met, through the mother’s ‘adaptation to her baby’s
need,’ does not necessarily mean that she is able to provide the theoretical first feed.
There are many more essential ingredients involved in the good enough mother’s ability
to feed her baby (Abram 2007a: 235). In Winnicott’s final formulations of the motherinfant relationship he focuses on the process of mother’s adaptation to the infant’s
needs, and suggests that these ingredients culminate and constitute her ‘survival’ of the
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newborn’s ruthless need for her. As we have seen, in 1968 he explores how the good
enough external object survives the baby’s primitive need. This is another aspect of
what occurs at the theoretical first feed and is associated with the baby’s excited states
and the mother’s capacity to identify and respond to her baby’s communications. The
‘good enough mother’ survives due to her state of primary maternal preoccupation. The
fact of the mother’s survival facilitates the baby’s ability to ‘create the object.’ In
contrast, the mother who is not able to tolerate the baby’s ordinary demands, but
instead tends to feel attacked by the baby and even persecuted (as we saw in the
mother of the 1939 paper on aggression), is the mother who does not survive
(Winnicott 1984). The ‘survival of the object’ is central – a crucial fact in the early life of
the human being – that either enables or disables the subject to move from object
relating to object usage. Here is Winnicott’s famous sequence: After subject relates to
object comes subject destroys object (as it becomes external); and then may come
‘object survives destruction by the subject . . . A new feature thus arrives in the theory
of object relating. The subject says to the object: ‘I destroyed you,’ and the object is
there to receive the communication. From now on the subject says: ‘Hullo object!’ ‘I
destroyed you.’ ‘I love you’. ‘You have value for me because of your survival of my
destruction of you’. ‘While I am loving you I am all the time destroying you’ . . . in
unconscious fantasy. (Winnicott [1968] 1969
A dissection of the sequence
The reader will note that in his outline summary for the audience in New York (as shown
above), Winnicott lists four stages to the sequence just quoted and underlines the words
‘relates’ ‘destroys’ and ‘use.’ Let us dissect the sequence and pay attention to the word
emphasis.
1. Subject relates to object.
This is the baby at the beginning of life who is unaware of the care he receives and is
merged with the m/other during the phase 469_Ch 14.indd
of absolute dependence. The baby is ruthless during this stage – a state of pre-ruth –
and he cannot know about the demands he puts on the environment; indeed it is
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paramount that the baby is not made aware of what he is doing. The environment
mother must protect him from this fact so that he can get on with the tasks
involved in being out of the womb.
2. Object is in process of being found instead of placed by the subject
in the world.
The baby’s needs are met and this leads to the object being experienced although not
yet consciously. The baby cannot yet be aware that the mother/object is a separate
Other. The process of finding out and moving towards more conscious awareness has to
be given space and time. The baby is not yet ready to be aware because further crucial
processes need to take place before he will be able to ‘place the object in the world.’
3. Subject destroys object.
The repeated and uninhibited ruthless demand for the environment’s adaptation
amounts to a continual destruction of the object. The ongoing destruction is not
intentional but rather a necessary process of ‘discovering’ the externality of the object.
4. Object survives destruction.
The mother’s sustained capacity to tolerate the baby’s endless demands because of her
state of primary maternal preoccupation offers the infant a sense of continuity and
reliability. Survival involves primary identification, mirroring, ego protection, processing
and, crucially, non-retaliation. The myriad aspects of the good enough m/other’s survival
enables the baby to move from apperception to perception in the potential space
between relating to subjective objects to perceiving objects objectively
perceived. This phase of the baby’s life takes him from absolute to relative dependence
as he moves from total unawareness to a gradual awareness of the environment.
5. Subject can use object.
The previous merger of the ‘environment mother’ and ‘object mother’ in the phase of
absolute dependence gave the baby the impression that he had two different mothers.
Due to the consistent survival of the object, this perspective has gradually changed
and by now the baby is able to see that both mothers are actually one (Winnicott 1963)
SW_
This sequence depicts the step-by-step process of the baby’s aggression (biological
urge/need) being survived (received and digested) by the external object which
simultaneously leads to the baby’s internalization, as Winnicott said, of the ‘ego
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supportive environment’ (Winnicott 1962: 63). The infant’s primary aggression, i.e. a
benign instinctual impulse – forces the object to adapt (or not) to the baby’s instinctual
needs. At the very beginning the subject cannot differentiate between instinctual bodily
need and the object’s separateness. Good enough adaptation to the newborn’s needs
means there is also no differentiation for the infant between psyche and soma. This
harmonious mix between psyche and soma, mother and infant, is incrementally
internalized culminating in the baby’s intrapsychic ‘imaginative elaboration’ about what is
happening to and in his body. Winnicott’s thesis is that there is no duality in the
biological/instinctual demand, because at the beginning it is a movement concerning
being alive and that has no intention other than to relate, i.e. to feel the extent of the
boundary and to find the object for needs to be met .
The crucial moment in Winnicott’s sequence of object relating to object use, is that the
object is there to receive the communication – i.e. the object is able to receive the
subject’s loving destruction. It is this reception (which inevitably includes reflection) that
constitutes the object’s survival. Because of the object’s ability to receive, and thus
survive, the subject will experience that his ruthless love has been survived by the
object, because she – the object – continues to receive and reflect; respond and adapt.
This is the essential experience of mutuality that will lead on to the establishment of an
internalized ‘ego supportive environment’ without which the subject is not able to
distinguish between their projections and the integrity of the m/other.
The surviving and non surviving objects
With Winnicott’s notion of the ‘first theoretical feed’ in mind, I propose that the surviving
object is the result of the first theoretical feed, that in turn facilitates the infant to create
the object. The notion of Winnicott’s first theoretical feed is clinically useful as it refers
to the initiation of symbolic thinking. I postulated that accepting this idea means we
could think of subsequent theoretical feeds at each stage of development. In other
words the interpsychic environment continues to be crucial for the intrapsychic surviving
object to grow and take shape at each stage of development. Late adolescence is the
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final stage of this journey and I posit the notion of a whole surviving object that comes
into being once the specific tasks of that phase are completed. The parents’ role for
each developmental stage is qualitatively different and if the early stages have been
successful the infant’s healthy development augers well. Nevertheless, as we see in
countless clinical examples every child continues to need the object to continue to
survive, because for a whole surviving object to come into being, the interpsychic
environment must survive at each stage to reach what I have proposed as the ‘final
theoretical feed’ (Abram 2005).
The notion of a ‘whole surviving object’ means that the subject is able to ‘live creatively’
and ‘feel real.’ Moreover, it continues to grow and develop through each stage of adult
life until death, through the nourishment that emanates from the intrapsychic, interpsychic and interpersonal relationships of individuals, families and groups.
The non survival of the object results in the birth of a non-surviving object, which
impoverishes and depletes the sense of self. In severe cases there is only psychic
deadness while in the less severe case the subject has to live through a false self
(Winnicott 1960).
I suggest that a sense of desire dominated by an intrapsychic non-surviving object
inhibits growth and lies at the root of transference-resistance. In contrast, desire in the
context of a surviving object unfolds a capacity to love.
The development of an intrapsychic surviving object in analysis relies on the analyst’s
psychic survival which facilitates the working through in the transference and the work
of mourning. While fulfilling desire liberates and strengthens the self to mature, the
reality principle demands that it be accompanied by disappointment because the
m/other is ultimately unattainable. The point at which the subject is able to realize her
desire and simultaneously recognize her disillusionment heralds the capacity for
discernment of the Other that leads to the capacity for concern and mature love
(Winnicott 1963).
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It will be noticed that, following Winnicott, I suggest a linear development of both a
surviving and non-surviving objects that grow in relation to the primary object’s survival
and non-survival throughout childhood. But I want to emphasize that in the sequence
from object relating to object usage, a continuous dynamic process gradually builds up
in the psyche and, at each stage of development, the surviving and non-surviving
objects contain particular configurations of memories at each phase along a
developmental line (A. Freud, 1974). These multilayered configurations and
constellations are sets of dynamic object relationships related to a continuous
relationship to time and space; repression and the unconscious.
Clinical examples throughout the literature illustrate how the analytic setting offers an
opportunity for an undeveloped surviving object to grow through the specialized analytic
relationship within the transference-countertransference. It is the analyst’s psychic
survival that potentially facilitates the subject’s (stunted) surviving object to grow
which in turn, strengthens and facilitates the development of the [sense of] self. The
incremental build-up of an object that survives in the analytic encounter, in a way that
the object did not survive hitherto, offers the patient a reinforcement for the
undeveloped intrapsychic surviving object. In a good enough analysis, the surviving
object can overcome and eclipse the non-surviving object. This does not infer that the
analyst is internalized as a new object for the patient but rather, it is the new experience
of object survival in the transference that reinforces the original experience of the
primary object that had once survived. The surviving object gains power within the
matrix of the après coup that potentially leads to the working through. Thus
traumata can subsequently be relegated to the past and a different level of psychicd 25
work will subsequently lead to a deeper and more authentic mourning of the lost object.
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