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Winnicott on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Relationship
Maria Popovathemarginalian.orgWinnicott places especial emphasis on reliability as a way of protecting the other from unpredictability
Maria Popova • Winnicott on the Qualities of a Healthy Mind and a Healthy Relationship
The twentieth-century psychoanalyst Donald W. Winnicott observed that children playing within a certain radius of their mothers display higher levels of creativity in their games than those who play farther away.
Tal Ben-Shahar • Short Cuts to Happiness: Life-Changing Lessons from My Barber
Just as Bowlby had observed, securely attached infants are distressed when their mother leaves them, but they show delight when she returns, and after a brief check-in for reassurance, they settle down and resume their play.
Bessel van der Kolk • The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma
Teaching delay of gratification shouldn’t begin until after the first year of life, when a foundation of safety has been established between baby and mother. Just as grace always precedes truth (John 1:17), attachment must come before separation.
John Townsend • Boundaries: When To Say Yes, How to Say No: When to Say Yes, When to Say No, to Take Control of Your Life
Winnicott’s crucial insight was that the parents’ agony was coming from a particular place: excessive hope. Their despair was a consequence of a cruel and counterproductive perfectionism. To help them reduce this, Winnicott developed a charming phrase: ‘the good enough parent’. No child, he insisted, needs an ideal parent. They just need an OK, pre
... See moreAlain De Botton • The School of Life: An Emotional Education
According to Winnicott, the good enough parent does not respond to their child’s each and every need. They do not helicopter-parent, but they do not neglect their child either. Rather, the work of a good enough parent is to create a safe space for their child to develop and unfold on their own.
Brad Stulberg • The Practice of Groundedness
In my work with people in the helping professions, I have often been confronted with a childhood history that seems significant to me. • There was a mother* who at the core was emotionally insecure and who depended for her equilibrium on her child’s behaving in a particular way. This mother was able to hide her insecurity from her child and from ev
... See moreAlice Miller • The Drama of the Gifted Child: The Search for the True Self
This last phrase is interesting given the comment by pediatrician and psychoanalyst D. W. Winnicott, who said that the mother “holds the child’s bits together.” She is his glue, his container. When the mother is really there, lovingly holding the child, it gives the child something to hold on to. Ultimately, that is the mother’s heart.