Skip to main content

The Psychoanalytic Winnicott We Need Now: On the Way to a Real Ecological Thought

  • Chapter
  • First Online:
D.W. Winnicott and Political Theory

Abstract

The Winnicott we need now reveals the schizoid condition of our culture. Dissociated from earthly bodies, we live as if brains alone are real and are seemingly compelled to bring ecological catastrophe upon an otherwise good-enough world. Stewarding earthly life—like facilitating care of children—involves capacities to surrender to the boundless fluidity and singular experience of being alive. However, if anything unites the sciences and the humanities today, it is befuddlement before this singular inner life. Winnicott, for whom primary process truths are elemental, is the antidote to our contemporary parlance which eradicates the psyche–somatic capacities of all living forms by imagining life as matter, subjects as objects, mind as the product of physical chemical laws, and children as a product of parents.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this chapter

eBook
USD 24.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Available as EPUB and PDF
  • Read on any device
  • Instant download
  • Own it forever
Softcover Book
USD 32.99
Price excludes VAT (USA)
  • Compact, lightweight edition
  • Dispatched in 3 to 5 business days
  • Free shipping worldwide - see info

Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout

Purchases are for personal use only

Institutional subscriptions

References

  • Abram, J. 2007. The Language of Winnicott. 2nd ed. London: Karnac.

    Google Scholar 

  • Benjamin, J. 1988. Bonds of Love. New York: Pantheon.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1995. Like Subjects. Love Objects. New Haven: Yale University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Bersani, L., and A. Phillips. 2008. Intimacies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Bollas, C. 1993. Why Oedipus? Becoming a Character. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Epstein, M. 2005. Open to Desire. New York: Avery.

    Google Scholar 

  • Ghent, E. 1990. Masochism, Submission, Surrender—Masochism as a Perversion of Surrender. Contemporary Psychoanalysis 26: 108–136.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  • Greenberg, J., and S. Mitchell. 1983. Object Relations in Psychoanalytic Theory. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Khan, M. 1983. Hidden Selves. London: Karnac.

    Google Scholar 

  • Loewald, H.W. 2000. The Essential Loewald: Collected Papers and Monographs. Hagerstown, MD: University Publishing Group.

    Google Scholar 

  • Milner, M. 1987. The Suppressed Madness of Sane Men. London: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

  • Morton, T. 2010. The Ecological Thought. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Nagel, T. 2012. Mind and Cosmos. New York: Oxford University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Nietzsche, F. 2001. The Gay Science. New York: Cambridge University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Ogden, T.H. 1989. The Primitive Edge of Experience. Latham, MD: Aronson.

    Google Scholar 

  • Orlie, M.A. 2014. For the Love of Earthly Life: Nietzsche and Winnicott Between Modernism and Naturalism. In The Aesthetic Turn in Political Theory, ed. N. Kompridis, 169–187. New York: Bloomsbury.

    Google Scholar 

  • Reid, W.T. 2015. Personal communication, August 24.

    Google Scholar 

  • Rose, J. 2003. On Not Being Able to Sleep. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Stern, D. 1998. The Interpersonal World of the Human Infant. London: Karnac.

    Google Scholar 

  • Winnicott, D.W. 1939. Aggression. In The Child and the Outside World (1957), 167–175. London: Tavistock.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1958. Through Pediatrics to Psycho-Analysis. London and New York: Tavistock and Basic Books.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1965. The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. London: Hogarth.

    Google Scholar 

  • ———. 1971. Playing and Reality. New York: Routledge.

    Google Scholar 

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

Copyright information

© 2017 The Author(s)

About this chapter

Cite this chapter

Orlie, M.A. (2017). The Psychoanalytic Winnicott We Need Now: On the Way to a Real Ecological Thought. In: Bowker, M., Buzby, A. (eds) D.W. Winnicott and Political Theory. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57533-3_4

Download citation

Publish with us

Policies and ethics