Winnicott Quotes

#1. Though you work like mad to keep parts of you undiscovered, it is horrible to imagine that you will be completely successful. As the psychologist D.W. Winnicott wrote, It is a joy to be hidden, but a disaster not to be found.

Jennifer Michael Hecht

#2. In his seminal article, "The Capacity to Be Alone," psychoanalyst and child development expert D. W. Winnicott asserted that the ability to be alone "is one of the most important signs of maturity in emotional development.

Laurie A. Helgoe

#3. The presence of the other, which can be very threatening, becomes, in play, a delightful source of curiosity, and this curiosity contributes toward the development of healthy attitudes in friendship, love, and, later, political life. Winnicott

Martha C. Nussbaum

#4. In front of the photograph of my mother as a child, I tell myself: she is going to die: I shudder, like winnicott's psychotic patient, over a catastrophe which has already occurred. Whether or not the subject is already dead, every photograph is this catastrophe.

Roland Barthes

#5. Winnicott also cites the hostile lullabies mothers sing to babies, who fortunately do not understand the words. For example: Rockabye, Baby, on the treetop, When the wind blows the cradle will rock, When the bough breaks the cradle will fall, And down will come baby, cradle and all.

Irvin D. Yalom

#6. I thought of the analyst Winnicott's observation: 'It is a joy to be hidden but disaster not to be found'.

Susie Orbach

#7. The fact that grief takes so long to resolve is not a sign of inadequacy, but betokens depth of soul.

Donald Woods Winnicott

#8. It is not possible to be original except on a basis of tradition.

D.W. Winnicott

#9. Feeling real is more than existing; it is finding a way to exist as oneself ... and to have a self into which to retreat for relaxation.

Donald Woods Winnicott

#10. There is for many a poverty of play.

Donald Woods Winnicott

#11. The most aggressive and therefore the most dangerous words in the languages of the world are to be found in the assertion I AM.

D.W. Winnicott

#12. Nevertheless, with reference to the natural process of childbirth one thing can seldom be forgotten, the fact that the human infant has an absurdly big head.

D.W. Winnicott

#13. The scientific approach to the phenomenon of human nature enables us to be ignorant without bieng frightened, and without, therefore, having to invent all sorts of wierd theories to explain away our gaps in knowledge.

Donald Woods Winnicott

#14. There is no such thing as a baby, there is a baby and someone.

Donald Woods Winnicott

#15. It is in playing, and perhaps only in playing, that the child is free to be creative.

Donald Woods Winnicott

#16. Now I want to say: 'After being - doing and being done to. But first, being.

D.W. Winnicott

#17. Tell me what you fear and I will tell you what has happened to you.

D.W. Winnicott

#18. Creativity consists in maintaining a key aspect of the experience of childhood throughout one's life: the capacity to create and recreate the world. Creativity is the omnipotence of the child's mind.

Donald Woods Winnicott

#19. It's only too easy to idealise a mother's job. We know well that every job has its frustrations and its boring routines and its times of being the last thing anyone would choose to do. Well, why shouldn't the care of babies and children be thought of that way too?

Donald Woods Winnicott

#20. We fight to exist. Personally, I am not ashamed of fighting to exist. We are doing no very extraordinary thing to fight simply because we do not wish to be enslaved or exterminated.

Donald Woods Winnicott

#21. I would rather be the child of a mother who has all the inner conflicts of the human being than be mothered by someone for whom all is easy and smooth, who knows all the answers, and is a stranger to doubt.

Donald Woods Winnicott

#22. The capacity to still feel wonder is essential to the creative process.

Donald Woods Winnicott

#23. The child is alone only in the presence of someone.

D.W. Winnicott

#24. I don't mind saying in advance that in my opinion jealousy is normal and healthy. Jealousy arises out of the fact that children love. If they have no capacity to love, then they don't show jealousy.

Donald Woods Winnicott

#25. Artists are people driven by the tension between the desire to communicate and the desire to hide.

D.W. Winnicott

#26. It's a poor thing to be sane!

Donald Woods Winnicott

#27. The precursor of the mirror is the mother's face.

Donald Woods Winnicott

#28. It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self.

D.W. Winnicott

#29. Play like dreams serves the function of self realization.

Donald Woods Winnicott

#30. It is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.

D.W. Winnicott

#31. We are poor indeed if we are only sane.

D.W. Winnicott