winnicott
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Philosophy and Psychoanalysis: A Difficult Relationship
Freud was attracted to philosophy, but also irritated by it. Not only did it never seem to get anywhere, but it treated human beings as essentially rational, which was in stark contrast to the way people actually behaved. This approach was clearly not the way forward. As with everything else, the way to establish the Continue reading
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Why do psychoanalysts attribute complex experiences to babies?
Most psychoanalysts attribute a great deal of importance to people’s early experiences, but the stories they tell seem far removed from what we would normally say about the experiences of babies and very young children. The school of psychoanalysis that does this in the most striking (and sometimes most offensive) way is Kleinianism, so it Continue reading
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Does it make sense to attribute complex thoughts and feelings to babies?
Psychoanalysts often attribute complex thoughts and feelings to babies, but since babies cannot speak and have a limited behavioural repertoire (compared to children and adults), this seems ridiculous. This objection resonates strongly with Wittgensteinians, who emphasise that inner processes stand in need of outward criteria. They may also note that Wittgenstein himself called into question Continue reading
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What is the Unconscious? Winnicott gets it wrong and gets it right!
What questions are generally a terrible starting point in philosophy (“what is Time?” “What is consciousness”) because they suggest that what we need to do is identify the kind of thing that is in question, whereas the real issue is to get a clearer understanding of the concepts involved. One way of doing this in Continue reading
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The World is My World – Wittgenstein vs Winnicott
“The world as it presents itself is of no meaning to the newly developing human being unless it is created as well as discovered.” Donald Winnicott How should we think about our relationship with the external world and with other people? Since Descartes, philosophers have started with the experiencing subject and then run into difficulties. Continue reading
Wittgenstein and Freud 