Section V - Continuing Education

D.W. Winnicott's "Mirror-Role of Mother and Family in Child Development"

Commentary by Dodi Goldman, Ph.D.

"Every point of thought," the poet Keats once noted, "is the center of an intellectual world." So it is with Winnicott´s paper, "Mirror-role of Mother and Family in Child Development." He begins with a single thought regarding the significance of mother´s face for the child and allows the idea to expand and percolate until it encompasses an entire way of thinking about healthy development, creativity, psychotherapy, and what it means to be truly alive.

To appreciate Winnicott´s handling of these themes, it might be useful to start where he does, with Lacan´s paper ´Le Stade du Miroir.´ I think Winnicott wants to signal us that he is not the first to appreciate the significance of what has come to be called "mirroring." But he has his own way of approaching this concept that both builds upon, yet is distinct from, the views of others.

Lacan, in his paper, noted the dramatic moment in which a child first notices him or herself in the mirror. Contemporary researchers refer to this as the developmental milestone of self-recognition from which we can plausibly infer that the child has generated some form of internal self-representation. That moment, Lacan believed, must be inevitably jarring for the child. The reason that this is so is that the child´s experience of nascent self is, at that time, one of being "all over the place." The reflection perceived in the mirror, on the other hand, is one in which he or she is collected into a unified image. How disorienting it must be, Lacan imagined, for the child to see such a unified image of his or her own disarray! The mirror, in other words, offers a kind of false promise. It says to the child: "You are of one piece" while the reality of psychic life is far more kaleidoscopic. For Lacan, this is the beginning of the individual assuming the "armor of an alienating identity." Lacan´s understanding of mirroring and the self is what might be called an "inside-out" view. What is experienced inside is compared with what is perceived outside. And the discrepancy creates a tension that never abates.

Harry Stack Sullivan offers a different version of mirroring. Sullivan´s notion could be called an "outside-in" view, or what contemporary researchers refer to as the process of incorporating responses of others into the subjective sense of self. The external world, rather than the internal experience, is the descriptive starting point. The infant´s self comes to reflect the forbidding gestures and tender awards presented by significant others. The self is, in Sullivan´s language, "built up through the reflected appraisals" of the outside world. The anxiety felt by the infant is not, as it is for Lacan, because of a discrepancy between internal disarray and an external unified image. Instead, it is the result of the transmission of feeling from mother to child. Mother is anxious about appraisals of others as to how she´s doing as a mother and this anxiety is then transferred to the infant.

Winnicott, for his part, was never comfortable thinking about development as coming either from the inside out or from the outside in. His primary area of interest was the overlap—what he termed the "intermediate space"—between internal and external reality. He already has this idea in mind when he opens this essay with the statement: "in the early stages of the emotional development of the human infant a vital part is played by the environment which is in fact not yet separated off from the infant by the infant." Notice that in Winnicott´s way of thinking, external reality ("the environment") is both inside and outside at the same time! It will take the infant a good deal of emotional development to separate what is inside from what is outside. But even after he or she has successfully done so, it remains vital, from Winnicott´s perspective, that these two areas of experiencing are able to intermingle. Later, I will have more to say about this most important topic.

Winnicott continues his essay by offering us an encapsulated summary of his entire complex developmental theory. From the vantage point of the environment, this involves "holding," "handling," and "object presenting." Winnicott employed the metaphor of "holding" to denote the total environmental provision prior to the initiation of object relationships. Essentially, it refers to the first 3-6 months of life— a specific developmental period he labeled "absolute dependence." According to Winnicott, if all goes well during this particular phase—and it usually does because mothers generally get it right—the infant undergoes significant internal development: the ego changes from unintegrated states to a more structured integration; there is a successive linking of motor and sensory experiences with the infant´s state of being a person; and mind develops as distinct from psyche. For Winnicott, this complex process is not simply a matter of the infant having desires met in a timely fashion by mother. He is suggesting that in the phase of absolute dependence there is no desire. Only later, with the infant´s growing awareness of dependence upon mother, is it accurate to speak in terms of meeting desires. What is important for Winnicott´s model is that when things go well during holding the infant has no means of knowing what is being properly provided and what is being prevented from impinging.

"Handling" is an important aspect of the holding environment at the beginning of life. Through adequate handling, the infant comes to accept the body as part of the self and to feel that the self dwells in and throughout the body. The boundaries of the body are then able to provide the limiting membrane between what is "me" and what is "not-me." This process is called in some places by Winnicott "personalization" and in others "the indwelling of the psyche in the soma." While Lacan thought the experience of a unified image was brought about through seeing oneself in the mirror, Winnicott believed that mother´s natural technique of handling paved the way for such an experience. As he wrote elsewhere: "The baby does not have to know about being made up of a collection of parts. The baby is a belly joined on to a chest and has loose limbs and particularly a loose head: all these parts are gathered together by the mother who is holding the child and in her hands they add up to one."

"Object presenting" was Winnicott´s way of talking about both the initiation of interpersonal relationships and the introduction of the whole world of shared reality to the growing child. For Winnicott, an infant cannot become a full person unless mother manages the situation. He thought it a mistake to conceptualize the mother-infant relationship as some kind of impersonal "biological program" or as a series of stimuli and rewards leading to "bonding." Winnicott did not minimize the fact that nature allowed for mother and baby to be attracted to each other. But he found such an idea insufficient for describing the development of the whole nascent person because it fails to take into account how mother must actively use her own capacities and instincts to adapt to her infant.

Without mother´s personal management of the situation, the infant´s innate abilities will not be brought within the competence of the infant´s self. This is what Winnicott means when he writes in this essay that the child should be "presented with an object in such a way that the baby´s legitimate experience of omnipotence is not violated." A baby´s cheek may be touched, for example, and he will automatically turn his head in the direction of the touch. If a nipple is put into his mouth, he will suck and take in milk. But if mother is not emotionally present, baby will be feeding from a thing and he will fail to have a meaningful personal experience that feels real. Rooting and sucking will become a seduction rather than be integrated into a personal pattern of living. As Winnicott put it elsewhere, when mother fails to present the breast in a loving way: "the reflex...betrays its owner. It almost owns the infant." Later in life, this might show up clinically as a compulsive addiction or other experiences that indicate the absence of a sufficient sense of self to manage the press of desires.

What is of paramount importance for Winnicott, in other words, is the human relationship established between mother and infant and the potentially severe consequences when things don´t go right. But what does it mean for things to "go right?" I think Winnicott´s way of thinking about this was rather paradoxical. In fact, I would argue that one cannot understand Winnicott if one does not think paradoxically. Let me illustrate this by comparing two passages. The first reads: "What the infant needs is just what he usually gets, the care and attention of someone who is going on being herself. This of course applies to fathers too." The second reads: "What does the baby see when he or she looks at the mother´s face? I am suggesting that, ordinarily, what the baby sees is himself or herself. In other words the mother is looking at the baby and what she looks like is related to what she sees there. All this is too easily taken for granted."

In the first passage, Winnicott describes what the vast majority of devoted parents do naturally. There is no question of perfection in childcare. Parents need not be overly concerned about doing the "right thing." Far more important is their capacity to go on being themselves in a genuine and authentic way. The second passage, however, takes us in a different direction. Here, Winnicott makes the profound observation that infant´s well-being depends upon being able to see himself or herself reflected in mother´s face. She must be able to recognize baby´s state of mind for baby to begin to have a coherent enough self to be able to manage stimuli coming from both within and without.

I hope by now you have noticed the paradox. Winnicott is proposing that for things to "go right" mother must simultaneously "be herself" while not letting her moods and states of mind intrude upon baby´s opportunity to develop a self. I think Winnicott would caution you not to try to resolve this paradox with your logical mind.

Winnicott´s essay, however, is not only about how things normally go right. He is also deeply concerned about things going wrong. One of the worst things that can happen, from Winnicott´s perspective, is that baby is prematurely forced to take into account mother´s state of mind. Instead of having the essential experience of discovering himself through mother´s ongoing recognition of his shifting states of mind, baby is forced to react to mother´s moods. It is not that baby responds to mother´s gestures; it is that baby is compelled to react to something beyond its capability. "Going on being" is replaced by an anxious use of mind to avoid being over-stimulated. The result, in Winnicott´s words, is that baby´s "own creative capacity begins to atrophy."

When Winnicott speaks of "creative capacity" he is not referring to artistic talents or other expressions of what we commonly refer to as creativity. Rather, he is alluding to an affective coloring of an individual´s whole attitude toward life. Only when living creatively does a person come alive as a human being. We cannot be fully alive if we reside too much in either the realm of reality or the realm of fantasy because in each case we are being simply reflexively reactive to stimuli. Both reality and fantasy are, for Winnicott, outside the individual´s creative realm. In the intermediate space between fantasy and reality, on the other hand, we come alive as creators or interpreters of our own experience; reality is interpreted in terms of fantasy, and fantasy in terms of reality. Perception renders fantasy relatively safe; fantasy renders perception relatively meaningful. A sense of personal vitality is generated when each prevents the other from becoming too powerful. This is what Winnicott is getting at when he writes: "I can now afford to look and see. I now look creatively and what I apperceive I also perceive." But, what can we make of the very next sentence? "In fact I take care not to see what is not there to be seen (unless I am tired)."

One way to get a handle on this rather enigmatic statement is to take into account that Winnicott believes that our fantasy life is going on all the time, even when we are not aware of it. We are dreaming, in other words, even while awake, except that our consciousness blocks out our awareness of the internal dream state. For Winnicott, we all must endure a perpetual struggle to separate fantasy from reality, the dream from our perceptions while at the same time allowing them to intermingle (again, he´s thinking paradoxically). While living creatively, we "take care" not to mistake one for the other, not to "see" the fantasy or dream that "is not there to be seen" (i.e. is not a perception). Of course, when we are tired, this task becomes somewhat more difficult.

In one step, Winnicott has moved us from what it means to see oneself in mother´s face to what it means to be truly alive. And from here, Winnicott draws important conclusions about treatment. "Psychotherapy," he writes, "is not making clever and apt interpretations; by and large it is a long-term giving the patient back what the patient brings. It is a complex derivative of the face that reflects what is there to be seen." He has no illusions about this being an easy task. It is, says Winnicott, "emotionally exhausting." But, we get our rewards. "Even when our patients do not get cured," writes Winnicott, "they are grateful to us for seeing them as they are, and this gives us a satisfaction of a deep kind." I have always found that to be a touching description of what our work is all about.

For Additional Reading:

Davis, M. & Wallbridge, D. Boundary and Space: an introduction to the work of D.W. Winnicott. NY: Bruner Mazel, 1981.

Goldman, D. In Search of the Real: the origins and originality of D.W. Winnicott. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1993.

Grolnick, S. The Work & Play of Winnicott. Northvale, NJ: Jason Aronson, 1990.

Phillips, A. Winnicott. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1988.

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