Comments on: 3, 4, 2

By: ktismatics

ktismatics — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 17:07:48 +0000

Not only have I finished reading the Winnicott book, I’ve written two blog posts about it. Given the >1 month delay, however, I suspect that you’ve abandoned the Winnicott project. You may have noticed also that Larval Subjects has either pupated or been eaten by a carnivorous bird. Do these developments betoken the continuing demise of psychoanalysis in North America?

By: parodycenter

parodycenter — Wed, 03 Sep 2008 02:27:24 +0000

Dr. Field, why is the Parody Center no longer on your blawgroll?

By: Fadi Abou-Rihan

Fadi Abou-Rihan — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 00:10:39 +0000

I think the question of how the infant can “attend” to the found object as a “not me” or other-than-me in the first place is absolutely on point. I’m not sure Winnicott could answer it adequately. It is also the question that has fueled so much interest, in some analytic cercles at least, in infant observation and research. I am personnally very suspicious of the relevance that that kind of research has for work with adults. But that’s a totally different, and very messy, can of worms.

In any case, the question you point to highlights the problem with a developmental line that postulates the almost sudden emergence of a new and radically different psychological agency/function. I think that’s why Klein departed from Freud on the emergence of an ego and a super-ego, for instance.

What I’m trying to do here is to take from Winnicott the idea of the found object and make something of it that doesn’t have to rely on a developmental topology/chronology. My hunch is that the other-than-me is not a quality of the object but of the subject’s relationship to that object and that the relationship itself is not necessarily bound by location (inside/outside) or sequence (pre/post).

We’ll see if this works.

By: ktismatics

ktismatics — Tue, 19 Aug 2008 20:43:52 +0000

I’ve retrieved a copy of Winnicott’s Playing and Reality from the library in order to follow along with your new series. I should read further before posing this question, so instead I’ll just wonder aloud: I wonder how the infant comes to attend to the transitional object in the first place. There are those Harlow monkey studies where infants without mothers seek physical comfort from soft cloth. But then there are language acquisition studies in which, prior to their 1st birthdays, infants acquire joint acquisition; i.e., the ability to attend to objects pointed out by their mothers.

On a related note, I just saw a reference this article demonstrating that magpies recognize their own reflections in a mirror.