Donald Winnicott

Klein and Fairbairn's object relations theory is more systematic than Winnicott's. His vivid writings shaped psychoanalysis theory and practice. He adhered to many of Freud's and Klein's ideas, but some of them conflicted with his. Guntrip sought to integrate Fairbairn's and Winnicott's theories, but he didn't fully understand them.

Winnicott's work focuses on the infant's subjective reality in relation to its mother. According to Winnicott, the child's primary experience is an oscillation between integrated and unintegrated affective states, and the "good enough motherempathic "'s presence protects the infant and helps it to meet its needs without trauma. The constant availability of mother's pleasant presence in response to internal demands creates a normal self experience over time. The mother's "primary maternal preoccupation" during the latter stages of pregnancy and the first few months of the infant's life—physically handling the infant's instinctive needs and emotionally "holding" its affective needs—feeds the infant's omnipotent fantasy that it can create the reality needed for satisfaction. The "environment-mother" empathizes and meets the infant's needs because its subjective initiative "invades" her. The infant's notion of omnipotence—that the desired item was "created" at the point of need—strengthens the early self experience and lays the groundwork for transitional objects and experiences.

When the mother ignores, doesn't notice, or misinterprets the infant's needs, it causes trauma. The infant's developing "true self" splits into an adaptable "false self" and withdraws into an internal fantasy world as a defense mechanism. The genuine self interacts with pleasing and frustrating object representations, like Klein's interior world of object relations, while the false self adapts to external reality. An excessive false self can create chronic emotions of inauthenticity and severe psychopathology, including antisocial behavior, non-traumatic events, and mothering failures. Cognitive processes can justify the false self and promote a protective, intellectualized perspective of oneself and others that conflicts with the true self's object-related goals.

Under ideal mothering, the infant can adapt to a shared reality. As its tolerance for environmental dissatisfaction and failure grows, the child creates a "transitional object," a tangible item that is neither part of the self nor part of external reality. The transitional object creates an intermediary "space" between internal and exterior reality that will evolve first into play and then into art, culture, and religion. It is the source of future "deception" and a mother-infant relationship that is unchallenged. The mother silently helps the newborn "make" the transitional object in the second half of the first year. After two or three years, it "dissolves" without sadness. Winnicott linked the natural development of transitional objects to fetishism and object relations psychopathology.

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