Winnicott's "Good Enough Mother" Explained

As the influence of psychoanalysis expanded in the early 20th century, parents started to fell anxious. The ideas of thinkers like Sigmund Freud, Melanie Klein or Alfred Adler about the crucial meaning early life has on our psychemade everything parents do (or do not) into a fateful. To alleviate some of this stress, child psychologist Donald Winnicott proposed the concept of a "good enough mother" (nowadays also refered to as "good enough parent").

The first and most important thing that a "good enough mother" isn't is perfect. Winnicott explains that there is no parent who does not make mistakes, and there is no parent who succeeds (or should) meet all the needs and desires of his child. What canand should be is a normal mother or father who, despite their shortcomings, manage to provide their children with a stable and healthy personal and family environment. They are not perfect, but they are good enough.

Winnicott's "good enough mother" idea is also intended to reduce the negative intervention of various experts in raising a family. There is no need to tell the mother that she is holding her child too much in her arms or too little. What is important is to give the mother and father the feeling that as long as they are doing their best, then they are also good enough parents.

Good Enough Mother and the Disillusionment

According to Winnicott, the main role of parents is not to preserve the child's illusion that reality will satisfy all his desires, but rather to allow him to sober up from it. The child's growth process involves acknowledging that both the parents and the world will sometimes disappoint him, but this without compromising his enjoyment, his appetite for life and his ability to accept reality. A good enough mother and a good enough father will be there to help the child shape healthy expectations of himself and those around him, none of these will ever be perfect. The parents are not perfect either, and any attempt to instill in the child this impression will lead to disappointment that will radiate into his adult life as well. The child needs to know how to trust his parents and know that they are there for him, but his emotional growth depends on forming a complex position in relation to himself and his life, such joy in them but also true to the challenges they will bring.

Life as Play: Short Introduction to Donald Winnicott's Thought

Donald Winnicott was a British pediatrician and one of the first psychoanalysts in the early 20th century. One of Winnicott's most important contributions to psychoanalysis, and to parents wherever they are, is his work on child-parent relationships in the early stages of life. Winnicott drew attention to the vulnerable and helpless nature of the earliest experiences of all of us, arguing that the way we dealt with those experiences would have a major impact on our lives later on.

At a time when psychoanalysis was emphasizing the various ways in which parents can complicate the minds of their children, Winnicott suggested the soothing notion of a "good enough mother" or parent. The good mother or father are not the ones who meet all the needs of the child and are free from mistakes, but the ones who provide him with a safe enough answer to allow him to deal with even what cannot be provided for him.

Winnicott, along with his wife Claire, developed the idea of ​​"holding" as an image of how the mother and parents in general create in the child a sense of security in reality and an illusion of control over it. They also linked the idea of ​​“holding” to psychological therapy and to how the therapist creates a “held” environment for the patient. Holding according to the Winnicotts is the foundation for the child and patient's sense of trust and confidence not only in the parent and caregiver, but in reality itself. They believed that anti-social behaviors could be the result of a child not enjoying a sense of security and attachment in childhood.

Winnicott also developed the idea of ​​the transitional object. Transitions include items such as blankets or toys. A transitional object can help a child feel safe and protected while adapting to independence. A transitional object not (only) allows the child to switch between situations with something safe and familiar, but allows him to switch between symbiosis with the mother and independence. The object of transition, with which the child identifies, is the transition between identification with the mother and with himself.

Winnicott also suggested the idea of ​​a “true self” versus a “false self” as related to the childish action of a game. He believed that the false self is a polite, orderly, external self that allows a person to integrate into society. The true self, on the other hand, is the one capable of creativity, and play helps a person to develop this true self. He even thought that play is a way of treatment that can benefit many adults as well.

Winnicott's ideas such as "good enough mother", "holdinh", "transitional object" and "real and false self" have profoundly influenced the language and psychological thinking to this day.