Winnicott's Influence on Play and Reflection

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111 THE DONALD WINNICOTT MEMORIAL LECTURE

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3 Eric Koops, LVO
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6 Brett Kahr
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8 PLAY AND REFLECTION IN DONALD WINNICOTTS 7
9 WRITINGS
30 Andr Green
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3 Cesare Sacerdoti
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211 Andr Green is a training analyst of the Paris Psychoanalytic
1 Society and an Honorary Member of the British Psychoanalytical
2 Society. He is a Patron of the Squiggle Foundation. He is the author
3 of various books published in the field of psychoanalysis, among
4 others Chains of Eros, On Private Madness, Work of the Negative, and
5 Time in Psychoanalysis.
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7 Brett Kahr is Senior Clinical Research Fellow in Psychotherapy and
8 Mental Health at the Centre for Child Mental Health in London,
9 and the Winnicott Clinic Senior Research Fellow in Psychotherapy
30 at the Winnicott Clinic of Psychotherapy. He is also Visiting Clini-
1 cian at the Tavistock Centre for Couple Relationships, part of the
2 Tavistock Institute of Medical Psychology. He has written or edited
3 several books on Winnicott, notably D. W. Winnicott: A Biographical
4 Portrait, which received the Gradiva Prize for Biography in 1997,
5 as well as Forensic Psychotherapy and Psychopathology: Winnicottian
6 Perspectives, and The Legacy of Winnicott: Essays on Infant and Child
7 Mental Health, all published by Karnac Books. He is also a Patron of
8 the Squiggle Foundation, and an Adviser to the Winnicott Clinic
911 of Psychotherapy. Most recently, he has become the Resident
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viii CONTRIBUTORS
111 Psychotherapist on BBC Radio 2, and Spokesperson for the BBC ini-
2 tiative Life 2 Live.
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4 Eric Koops, LVO, is the Chairman of the Trustees of the Winnicott
5 Clinic of Psychoanalysis, the registered charity responsible for the
6 annual Donald Winnicott Memorial Lecture.
7 The Clinic was founded in 1969 to promote professional train-
8 ing in the principles of psychotherapy, to conduct research, and to
9 assist in the provision of individual psychotherapy. During the
10 1990s, to meet changing circumstances, assistance was extended to
1 patients in group therapy, training grants were awarded, and sym-
2 posia arranged to encourage organizations to reduce workplace
3 stress.
4 Since 2000, the main focus of Clinic activities has been the wider
5 dissemination of the work and ideas of Dr Donald W. Winnicott
6 (18961971), the distinguished English paediatrician, child psychia-
711 trist, and psychoanalyst, who made an outstanding contribution to
8 the understanding of the causes of mental illness, particularly in
9 infants and children. To this end, the Clinic established the Winni-
20 cott Clinic Senior Research Fellowship in Psychotherapy and
1 Counselling, and the annual Donald Winnicott Memorial Lecture,
2 designed for a wide audience of professionals and others involved
3 with children. Lectures focus upon specific topics arising from
4 Winnicotts life and ideas, in terms of relevance for twenty-first cen-
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211 t is my great pleasure to welcome you to this, the third Donald
1 Winnicott Memorial Lecture. We are very pleased to see so
2 many, especially many who were here last year, and some who
3 were here two years ago. To us, this third Lecture is really some-
4 thing of a milestone. We have a partnership with Karnac Books, by
5 whom both previous Lectures have been publishedas we intend
6 that tonights will be.
7 We are a small charity, but we think that this dissemination is a
8 critical educational factor for us and for those around. We also
9 recognize that an annual lecture of this sort provides a meeting-
30 point for people. Some of you may not have seen each other for
1 months, or even a year, and we would welcome any feedback that
2 you might like to give usperhaps, for example, whether or not we
3 as a Clinic might do a little more to foster meetings of this nature,
4 acting as a catalyst for those who are often really quite lonely out
5 there in the field.
6 Having welcomed you, my next tasks are very simple: to ask
7 Brett Kahr to introduce our speaker, and to assure you that we are
8 very conscious that many of you will need to get away at the time
911 stated on the ticket application in order to catch last trains home.
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211 ood evening, ladies and gentlemen. No doubt many of you
1 here tonight, if not all of you, will be familiar with the
2 wonderful bronze statue of Sigmund Freud, created by the
3 sculptor Oscar Nemon, that sat for many years beside the library in
4 Swiss Cottage in North London. In more recent years, the statue has
5 been relocated, and it now resides in a little garden nook in front of
6 the Tavistock Clinic, not far from the Freud Museum. Although
7 colleagues will know this statue quite well, it may not be appreci-
8 ated that Donald Winnicott, the man to whom we pay tribute this
9 evening, played a leading role in having Nemons statue of Freud
30 set in bronze and unveiled at a special ceremony on 2 October 1970,
1 only a few months before Winnicotts own death from cardiac
2 disease on 25 January 1971. Winnicott expended a great deal of
3 energy during his final months of illness to ensure that sufficient
4 funds would be raised so that his great hero, Sigmund Freud, could
5 be properly memorialized.
6 Just as Winnicott helped us to remember Freud, tonight we have
7 gathered here to remember Winnicott, a man whose contributions
8 to psychotherapy and psychoanalysis, and whose understanding of
911 children, remains unparalleled. When those of us associated with
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4 INTRODUCTION
111 the Winnicott Clinic of Psychotherapy decided how this should be

2 accomplished, we opted not for a statue, but rather for something
3 living and breathing and very vibrant, in keeping with Donald
4 Winnicotts own character (Kahr, 1996). Following in the distin-
5 guished footsteps of Dr Joyce McDougall, our first Winnicott
6 Memorial lecturer, and Sir Richard Bowlby, our second Winnicott
7 Memorial lecturer, we have really struck psychoanalytical gold:
8 Professor Andr Green of Paris has honoured us by accepting our
9 invitation to deliver the Third Annual Donald Winnicott Memorial
10 Lecture, and to talk to us this evening about his reflections on
1 Winnicotts theory of play.
2 Born in Cairo in 1927, to a Sephardi Jewish family originally
3 known as Gren, Andr Green, the youngest of four children,
4 emigrated to France in 1946 to undertake his university studies. He
5 decided upon a career in medicine and psychiatry at quite an early
6 age, and after arriving in Paris on 8 May 1946, he set about his plan
711 with gusto. In a recent interview, Professor Green recalled that:
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9 The teaching of medicine was very boring. For the first years, I was
a bad student. I didnt pay much attention to my exams and I used
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to work for myself; I studied philosophy, psychology; I read books
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about culture, not very useful for my medical training. [Quoted in
2 Green & Kohon, 1999b, p. 15]
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4 One can already identify the early signs that for Green, medicine
511 and psychiatry would prove to be a gateway to his ultimate profes-
6 sion of psychoanalysis.
7 Andr Green undertook his psychiatric training at the
8 renowned Parisian hospital, the Hpital Sainte Anne, under the
9 tutelage of the eminent psychiatrist, Professor Henri Ey, whose
311 name may not be familiar to an Anglo-Saxon readership today, but
1 who, during the 1950s, was indisputably the most important
2 figure of psychiatry in France, and maybe even in the world
3 (quoted in Green & Kohon, 1999b, p. 17). It may well have been Dr
4 Greens experience of working with Professor Ey that afforded that
5 privileged insight into the dynamics of the more troubled and more
6 complex patients with whom Andr Green has worked so closely
7 during the last four or more decades.
8 In the early 1950s, as a young psychiatrist, Green began to find
911 his way to psychoanalysisby no means an easy undertaking for a
INTRODUCTION 5
111 French psychiatrist at that time, as psychoanalysis had not then

2 captured the cultural imagination of France as it would do in the
3 period from 1968 onwards. In fact, Andr Green will remember the
4 mid-century discovery of two French biomedical researchers who
5 recognized the sedative properties of a class of drugs called
6 phenothiazines, especially chlorpromazine, which ushered in the
711 pharmacological revolution, not only in French psychiatry, but
8 worldwide. To have had the courage and independence of mind to
9 find ones way to psychoanalysis just as the rest of the psychiatric
10 profession became so pharmacologically orientated, gives us an
1 indication of Andr Greens strength of character, and of his ability
2 to remain his own man.
3 He began his personal analysis in 1956 with the highly respected
4 French psychoanalyst Maurice Bouvet, himself the student of Sacha
5 Nacht, one of the earliest Parisian psychoanalysts. Green completed
6 his analysis in 1960, shortly before Bouvets death. He then under-
7 took two more analyses, first with Jean Mallet, and then with
8 Catherine Parat (Etchegoyen, 1999a), qualifying as a member of the
9 Socit Psychanalytique de Paris, the oldest psychoanalytical soci-
211 ety in France. Since the completion of his studies, Green has had a
1 most distinguished career in all aspects of psychoanalysis, having
2 served as President of the Socit Psychanalytique de Paris,
3 Director of the Institut de Psychanalyse, as well as having served as
4 Vice-President of the International Psycho-Analytical Association.
5 He also held high offices for The International Journal of Psycho-
6 Analysis and the Nouvelle Revue de Psychanalyse.
7 No stranger to Great Britain, many of you will recall that
8 Professor Green held the Freud Memorial Professorship at Univer-
9 sity College London during the 19791980 academic year, and he
30 has visited the Squiggle Foundation in London on many occasions.
1 He has authored a large number of books on a variety of topics over
2 many decades, each characterized by a unique writing style, full of
3 classical and literary references that draw upon Greens great intel-
4 ligence and vast erudition.
5 Although trained as a classical psychoanalyst, Green remains
6 one of the few traditional French psychoanalysts who studied the
7 work of Jacques Lacan with great seriousness, at a time when
8 Lacans more conservative colleagues regarded him as mad. Simi-
911 larly, Andr Green championed the work of Donald Winnicott long
6 INTRODUCTION
111 before most continental psychoanalysts had begun to develop an

2 appreciation for the great English psychoanalyst. Though one may
3 not easily detect overt correspondences between the work of Lacan
4 and Winnicott, I think that Greens appreciation for these
5 two psychoanalytical titans provides us with more evidence of his
6 independent-mindedness, for not many people could have had
7 profitable dialogues with both Lacan and with Winnicott. Among
8 contemporary practitioners, Andr Green, perhaps more than
9 almost anyone, epitomizes an international spirit of independence,
10 which Donald Winnicott would so much have appreciated.
1 It gives me great pleasure, ladies and gentlemen, that Professor
2 Andr Green has come from Paris to speak to us tonight, and I now
3 call upon him to deliver the Third Annual Donald Winnicott
4 Memorial Lecture.
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711 References
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9 Etchegoyen, R. H. (1999a). Preface. In: G. Kohon (Ed.), The Dead Mother:
20 The Work of Andr Green (pp. xixxiii). London: Routledge.
1 Green, A., & Kohon, G. (1999b). The Greening of psychoanalysis: Andr
2 Green in dialogues with Gregorio Kohon. In: G. Kohon (Ed.), The
3 Dead Mother: The Work of Andr Green (pp. 1058). London:
4 Routledge.
511 Kahr, B. (1996). D. W. Winnicott: A Biographical Portrait. London: Karnac.
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211 n writing Donald Winnicotts commemoration I find that
1 I strongly identify with him. Throughout his life Winnicott
2 struggled against compliance, conformism, and submission. It
3 is scarcely surprising there has not been any Winnicottian school
4 and that no one is called his disciple, even those closest to him. As
5 I feel a certain continuity exists between Winnicott and myself, I
6 shall not provide a submissive account of his ideas, even though I
7 do think he was the most creative mind in psychoanalysis, after
8 Freud.
9 When Winnicott gave his first lecture to the British Psycho-
30 analytical Society, on 28 November 1945, on the subject of Primi-
1 tive emotional development, he said it was like the introduction to
2 a book. He expounded his original method: ideas were not formed
3 from other theories. He confessed that in building his own theory,
4 he gathered elements from various sources and related them to his
5 clinical experience, but was prepared to examine in due course the
6 few things he stole here and there from others. However, my
7 concern here is not what Winnicott is said to have stolen from
8 others, but rather what his own theory chose to leave out and
911 would not embrace.
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8 ANDR GREEN
111 Today I am going to talk about Winnicotts last work, which I

2 consider a sort of testament: Playing and Reality (1971). I shall focus
3 attention mainly on playing and not so much on realitydespite
4 Winnicotts locating play, like other transitional phenomena,
5 between inner and outer reality; outer reality does not seem to me
6 limited to objectively perceived objects. I think it is in the presence
7 of horror that we understand the necessity of play in making it
8 bearable.
9 Winnicott had been interested in play ever since 1942 (Why
10 Children Play) but I am more interested in his last statements about
1 it. Two central chapters are devoted to play in Playing and Reality.
2 One of them, Playing: a theoretical statement, is constantly
3 quoted at length and is considered to be the most detailed study
4 on the topic. The other chapter, Playing: creative activity and the
5 search of the self, is, quite surprisingly, almost never mentioned;
6 maybe it provokes little comment because it is obscure and diffi-
711 cult. Although the two chapters are very different it is my feeling
8 that, bearing the same title, they must be tightly linked. I shall
9 consider this two-sided development as the axis of my elaboration.
20 I believe that many of the other chapters of the book, whether
1 before or after this central couple, are enlightened by reference to
2 them.
3 First, I want to make a statement to indicate where I stand. On
4 the one hand I accept the profound originality and the creativity
511 of most of the concepts introduced by Winnicott in psychoanalysis;
6 on the other, I disagree with Winnicotts explanation of their
7 supposed origin in the motherbaby relationship.
8 I think that it was thanks to Winnicotts experience of the
9 analytic situationand we perhaps may say his own experience
311 first as an analysandthat he was able, when looking at children,
1 to notice what had been escaping everyone elses attention.
2 In Human Nature (1988), a book published posthumously, when
3 considering the earliest stages, Winnicott moves towards the
4 complete merging of the individual and the environment that is
5 implied in the words primary narcissism. Winnicott compares it
6 with the physical transformation of the endometrium intermingled
7 with the placenta. This basic hypothesis appears to me as a fecun-
8 dity for the later construction of transitional phenomena to which
911 play is so closely linked:
PLAY AND REFLECTION IN DONALD WINNICOTTS WRITINGS 9
111 There is an intermediate state between this and interpersonal rela-

2 tionships which has very great importance of which it could be said
3 that between the mother who is physically holding the baby and
4 the baby there is a layer which, we have to acknowledge, is an
5 aspect of herself and at the same time an aspect of the baby. It is
mad to hold this view and yet this view must be maintained.
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Let us consider this quotation. I think of it as what we may call the
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10 unsaid in Winnicott; something that he did not publishyet all
1 that he published derives from this basic hypothesis that, curiously,
2 we do not find in his work. Everything he wrote on the transitional
3 alternative area, the transitional phenomena and the symbolic
4 union, is grounded in this mad view of something belonging at
5 the same time to the mother and to the child. This, of course, poses
6 questions for our ideas on identity and on the meaning of trying to
7 reunite what has been separated.
8 I think it may be a surprise for many of you to see how I dissoc-
9 iate myself from this point of view. I believe that as a paediatrician
211 Winnicott could not free himself from this viewpoint; he was deter-
1 mined to see things like that. However, I do not think, for instance,
2 that playing is rooted in, or deeply influenced by, the motherbaby
3 relationship.
4 That concept is one which Winnicott would not consider impor-
5 tant in analysis with his adult patientsand probably in his own
6 and that is what created some misunderstandings, or some
7 regrettable lacunae, in his theory. Such gaps, in my view, were
8 shared with many other authors in the British Society. One such
9 gap, for instance, is Winnicotts dismissal of the part of sexuality in
30 playing. At the beginning of the chapter Playing: a theoretical
1 statement, Winnicott devotes a rather extensive section to the
2 (negative) relationship between play and masturbation: There is
3 one thing I want to get out of the way (Winnicott, 1988). He argues
4 about the physical excitement of play, yet rejects the links in our
5 mind between playing and masturbatory activity. He believes that
6 if, when a child is playing, the physical excitement of instinctual
7 involvement becomes evident, then the playing stops. He does not
8 consider that the stopping of the play could be preventive of
911 orgasm or equivalent to it. He does not think of the comparison
10 ANDR GREEN
111 between play and foreplay where, too, if the excitement is over-
2 whelming, what we have is premature ejaculation, which brings an
3 end to the sexual relationship. Moreover, Winnicott seems to ignore
4 Freuds concept of aim-inhibited drives, a very surprising matter
5 since he develops at length the relationship between playing and
6 friendship just as Freud did; he, for his part, quotes the same exam-
7 ple: friendship as an expression on aim-inhibited drives. It is
8 striking to see how much energy Winnicott spends in dissociating
9 playing from sexuality. Ever since the time of Melanie Klein, around
10 the 1930s, sexuality has been considered by British analysts as a
1 secondary and rather unimportant matter, except in the case of
2 perversions. Winnicott, therefore, recommends on the subject the
3 works of those who are not analysts. Let me point out that
4 Winnicott refuses the hypothesis of a preliminary or primary form
5 of sublimation.
6 Though there may be a great deal to say about thisas can be
711 inferred from biographies of Winnicott, as Rodman so excellently
8 demonstratesI shall systematically neglect all arguments related
9 to his historical background and personality. If I disagree with the
20 explanation grounded in the motherbaby relationship, I am not
1 going to interpret Winnicotts ideas according to this baby and
2 mother relationship, however eloquent are the details we possess
3 and their possible influence on Winnicott according to his own
4 confessions to his friends.
511 My feeling about the importance of play in Winnicott is related
6 to the fact that Winnicott himself was of a very playful nature. He
7 once said of himself that he was a clown and that he understood
8 how important it was to himself to have play as a remedy for his
9 helplessness towards reality.
311 In the excellent compilations about playing in the works of
1 Winnicott (for example, those by Alexander Newman and Jan
2 Abram) different aspects related to that concept are described. I do
3 not intend to re-examine the relationship of playing to these
4 aspects, but will rather try to clarify what appear to me as the more
5 fundamental characteristics as I see them.
6 I agree with Winnicott, at least partly, when he writes: It is play
7 that is the universal and that belongs to health. . . . The natural thing
8 is playing and the highly sophisticated twentieth century phenom-
911 ena is psychoanalysis (Winnicott, 1971).
111 The first words of the quotation are emphasized. I totally share this
2 opinion. There is no culture without play; there are no periods of
3 history from which play has been absent. But if it is so, and I believe
4 it is, this universality is compatible with all the varieties of
5 motherbaby relationships, either in the different phases of history
6 or in the different cultures on earth, although play is constantly
711 present everywhere.
8 My conclusion, therefore, is that play, this universal activity,
9 belongs to an innate attribute of the mind that takes different
10 shapes, not only in various groups, but also for different individu-
1 als. Winnicott was too stuck in the motherbaby relationship to
2 interpret its universality in relationship to the characteristics of the
3 mind. I am not even sure that play belongs to health. For example,
4 I wonder how health can be integral to some kinds of playsuch
5 as the Roman games, or playing a kind of football with the heads
6 of the defeated enemies in Latin America, or playing Russian
7 roulette; today, even football matches may become excuses for
8 assassinations. On the other hand, I see a strong participation of the
9 drives, both sexual and destructive. I wonder how Winnicott would
211 have interpreted the shouts of joy, the enthusiasm, the orgasmic
1 quality which accompanies the cry of Goal! I doubt health has
2 anything to do with that. I think the activity of play can sometimes
3 become distorted, corrupted and perverted, in society as well as in
4 individuals: e.g., Panem et circenses.
5 Here I am afraid that on this occasion, as on many others, we
6 meet Winnicotts idealization and his refusal to consider play as
7 part of sickness. I think Winnicott was wrong in mixing up ruth-
8 less love with what was sheer destruction, and also in being so
9 reticent about admitting the death instinct hypothesis. I cannot
30 prove the existence of a death instinct (though some recent bio-
1 logical discoveriesapoptosisdo seem to favour it). But what
2 I am sure of is that it is not enough to incarnate the good-mother to
3 cure a patient, to vanish when she acts out her destructivity, or
4 to accept passively the patients destroying the setting. Sometimes
5 the analyst cheats, lies, acts out violently. In none of these instances
6 is play absent; it is in fact provocative. Here, play requires the part-
7 ners submission and omnipotence based on the interplay of
8 colluding narcissisms, on the real desire to harm, debase, and des-
911 troy the other. I am sure everyone will understand to whom I refer.
12 ANDR GREEN
111 Let me say that I think it is better to know what enemy you fight,
2 rather than want to save him by showing that you have not been
3 destroyed, or that the good-mother is still present.
4 During these last few years we have witnessed many examples
5 of perverted playing, of dirty playing. Such play is not based on an
6 interchange, but on the will to dominate; it is a way of imposing
7 ones will, and the will to submit. It is a kind of play that is impreg-
8 nated with destructiveness. I think Winnicott could not accept that
9 destructiveness could also be transformed into a sort of play that
10 brought not only a kind of enjoyment, but was also a way of feed-
1 ing ones omnipotence.
2 To come back to the quotation, I also agree that psychoanalysis
3 is a highly sophisticated phenomenon of the twentieth century. Yet,
4 the psychoanalytic situation can be spoilt by different factors: the
5 partners inability to play, or their propensity to get stuck in repeti-
6 tive compulsions, or, as we have seen recently, being used by the
711 analyst to cure his own pathologyjust as perverts pretend to cure
8 others by convincing them to become perverts as well.
9 All these occurrences are also varieties of playing. Therefore ,we
20 cannot consider playing as an aspect of health and all the other
1 occurrences I have mentioned as non-playing. Just as we have
2 dreams, we also have nightmares, nocturnal terrors, or somnambu-
3 lism that, although being failures of dreams, are varieties of the
4 psychic life of the sleeper just as much as are dreams.
511 In wanting to put play on the side of health, Winnicott also
6 wanted to relate it to a satisfactory motherinfant relationship
7 based on trust and developing into group relationships. According
8 to my ideas, playing belongs to group as well as psychic phenom-
9 enaincluding dreaming, fantasizing, forging fictions, and myths.
311 If I have to find a trait to define it, I shall have to turn not to a
1 Winnicottian concept, but to a Bionian one. I would make the
2 hypothesis that it could be one of the applications of Bions alpha
3 function. And just as Bion created the symbol K for Knowledge,
4 he also created K as its complement. I believe that play, apart
5 from its emotional value, is a form of thought (like the dream) or of
6 knowledge that, according to some patients, is a form of not know-
7 ing. In the same way, just as treacherous, cruel, and destructive
8 plays are forms of non-playing, they can also be seen as negative
911 playing. Nothing is left to chance. The winner or the loser (as in the
111 negative therapeutic reaction) is known in advance. Domination

2 infiltrates the whole playing. It is difficult to extract oneself from
3 these foul plays.
4 Why turn to this abstraction? Because, to me, the specificity of
5 play is to change reality into something else, something that trans-
6 forms what is unbearable in realitybe it internal or external.
711 While I agree with Winnicott about the localization of play at the
8 limit of internal and external reality, I am afraid that Winnicott
9 again, and for the same reason, neglected to speak of the links that
10 exist between reality and horror. It is difficult to accept that exter-
1 nal reality is only objectively perceived. The distinction, of course,
2 holds when compared to the omnipresence of subjectivity. The least
3 we can say about external reality is that there is too much horror in
4 it: wars, delinquency, natural catastrophes, epidemics, unemploy-
5 ment, terrorism. This is our daily world. I wonder how we could
6 bear all the traumas inflicted by reality without play. And all these
7 themes become favourite topics of play for children.
8 Let us consider further playing and reality. The association
9 was first made by Freud in his paper Creative writers and day-
211 dreaming, where he writes:
1
2 The childs best loved and most intense occupation is with his play
3 or games. Might we not say that every child at play behaves like a
4 creative writer in that he creates a world of his own, or, rather,
rearranges the things of this world in a new way which pleases
5
him. It would be wrong to think he does not take that world seri-
6
ously; on the contrary, he takes his play very seriously and he
7 invests a lot of emotion in it. The opposite of play is not what is seri-
8 ous but what is real. In spite of all the emotion with which he
9 constructs his world of play, the child distinguishes it quite well
30 from reality; and he likes to link his imagined objects and situations
1 to the tangible and visible things of the real world. [Freud, 1908e,
2 pp. 141154]
3
4 This linking is all that differentiates the childs play from fanta-
5 sizing (ibid., pp. 143144). While Winnicott constantly repeats that
6 he is not in disagreement with Freud but adds to his theory, on the
7 topic of play there is not a single reference to Freuds work. He
8 could have paid attention to Freuds even earlier remarks in
911 Psychopathic characters on the stage (1942a), where he observes:
14 ANDR GREEN
111 Being present as an interested spectator at a spectacle or play

2 [schau-spiel written in two words to underline the components of
3 play] does for adults what play does for children (ibid., p. 30). Here
4 we have the importance of witness, which will be taken up by
5 Winnicott in a very different way. It is also surprising that we find
6 no mention about the cotton-reel game, which was considered
7 famous by so many writers, from Isaacs to Lacan. Nor do we find
8 anything on the precise remark that Freud made in Inhibitions,
9 symptoms and anxiety (1926d), stating that through play the ego
10 which has experienced a trauma passively repeats its activity in the
1 play. Thus changing from passivity to activity, they attempt to
2 master their experiences physically (ibid., p. 167).
3 I suppose that in this instance Winnicott did not care about Freud
4 because what he had in mind was the Kleinian technique. He criti-
5 cized Melanie Kleins conception of play, which considered the inter-
6 pretation of the play only as an equivalent of fantasy (seen as a direct
711 expression of the instinct) but neglected its study per se. To some
8 extent Winnicott comes closer to Freud, for instance, when he empha-
9 sizes the near withdrawal state of the child playing as being akin
20 to the concentration of older children and adults (Winnicott, 1971).
1 This concentration is also close to a sort of suspension of the
2 relation to reality that can even be compared to a negative halluci-
3 nation. It would be more appropriate to say a suspension of the
4 belief in reality, a neglect of it, though it is not ignored, which looks
511 like a splitting or denial of it. Returning to Winnicotts quotation
6 that psychoanalysis is the highly sophisticated twentieth century
7 phenomenon, its source can be traced back to Winnicotts first
8 psychoanalytic paper, Primitive emotional development, in
9 which he recalls his beginnings in psychoanalysis. Having decided
311 that he had to study psychosis in analysis, he writes:
1
I have had about a dozen psychic adult patients and half of them
2
have rather extensively been analysed. This happened in the war
3
and I might say that I hardly noticed the Blitz, being all the time
4 engaged in analysis of psychotic patients who are notoriously and
5 maddeningly oblivious of bombs, earth-quakes and floods.
6 [Winnicott, 1945]
7
8 So, if the psychotic denies and represses reality, the analyst, in the
911 sophisticated play that he plays with them, has to share some of this
111 denialnot to the point of behaving like them, but by adopting an

2 attitude which suspends his relationship to reality.
3 This is true of all play, because this attitude is a prerequisite in
4 order to foster that mode of functioning, already described by
5 Freud in childrens play, where the child creates a new world or
6 rearranges his perceptions and combines different elements in
711 conformity with his will, building a new order.
8 Freud himself, in his paper The loss of reality in neurosis and
9 psychosis (1924e), thus compares the delusional world of the
10 psychotic to the world of fantasy:
1
2 It can hardly be doubted that the world of fantasy plays the same
3 part, in psychosis, as in neurosis and that here too it is the store house
4 from which the materials or the pattern for building the new reality
[the delusion] are derived. But whereas the new imaginary external
5
world of psychosis attempts to put itself in the place of external real-
6
ity, that of neurosis on the contrary is apt like the play of children
7 [my italics] to attach itself to a piece of realitya different piece from
8 the one it has to defend itself and to lend that piece a special impor-
9 tance and a secret meaning which we (not always quite appropri-
211 ately) call a symbolic one. Thus we see that both in psychosis
1 and neurosis there comes into consideration the question not only of
2 loss of reality but also of a substitute for reality. [Freud, 1924e, p. 187]
3
4 Two remarks have to be observed here. The first is that, according
5 to Freud, play is not only related to health but can develop in many
6 directions: one is the creative writing of fiction, the other is neuro-
7 sis and, by extension (if we think of psychosis), delusion.
8 The fantasy of the psychotic is not only a substitute of play, as
9 in neurosis, but also pretends to be reality, more appropriately called
30 a new reality. It is no longer a question of play, but of a substitute
1 for the lost reality. When considering borderline cases, it is some-
2 times difficult to trace the frontier between the playing of the
3 neurotic and the replacement of reality of the psychotic. My feeling
4 is that the dimension of playing, even when the patient is akin to
5 psychosis, is never absentbecause the belief in the new reality is
6 never complete and it can be subject to criticism in the oscillation to
7 and from the psychotic pole.
8 It is true that the great majority of the meanings attached to play
911 are positive, but we cannot forget that play is also associated with
16 ANDR GREEN
111 cheating, from which it is inseparable: to play into somebodys

2 hands, to be caught in someone elses play, or to be trapped. I think
3 that all these expressions can be seen as perversions of play. This
4 confirms my idea that playing is a category beyond good or bad.
5 The second remark to be observed is Freuds conclusion on the
6 loss of reality in neurosis and psychosis. What appears important
7 to me is the couple: loss of reality, and the substitute for reality. In
8 play, the loss element is minimal and the substitution element maxi-
9 mal. In illness, be it neurosis or psychosis, the element of loss
10 predominates and the element of substitution is subordinate to it.
1 Loss and substitution go together; whenever we think of one we
2 should also think of the other. When play is performed, there is loss
3 behind it. It is not by chance that Winnicotts examples deal mostly
4 with the kind of separations that cannot be overcome, or can be
5 only apparently overcome. When we think of loss, let us remember
6 Freuds phrase: But it is evident that a precondition for the setting
711 up of reality, is that the objects have been lost which once brought
8 real satisfaction (1924e, p. 236). What is the compensation for the
9 price paid for this setting-up?
20 During examination we find in many, many cases that in the
1 childs background, whether in the present or in the past, there is a
2 depressed mother. Here we have an example of a double loss, or even
3 of a reflected one: the loss represented by the mothers depression,
4 and also the effect produced on the child who also loses something
511 although he does not know exactly what. I have treated the subject
6 rather extensively in my essay, The dead mother (1999), but this
7 evening I want to concentrate on the double-sided loss and the
8 reflective effect that the mothers depression has on the child.
9 In Playing and Reality (1971) Winnicott gives several examples
311 and I shall select some of them, remarkable to me, which are very
1 representative. He begins the first chapter, Transitional objects and
2 transitional phenomena, with a section entitled Stringwhich
3 he had already published in Child Psychology and Psychiatry (1961)
4 and also in The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environ-
5 ment (1965). This clinical case is meaningful to him. He wants to
6 show how a child copes with separations and loss, using the case
7 of a seven-year-old boy of normal intelligence. I do not want here
8 to give a detailed account of Winnicotts consultations (the clini-
911 cal depression of the mother, her successive hospitalizations, her
111 attention being turned away from the boy when his sister was born,
2 etc.), but instead to concentrate on the Squiggle game that the boy
3 accepted very easily without giving an abnormal impression of
4 himself. Winnicott writes: The boys laziness immediately became
5 evident and also nearly everything I did was translated by him into
6 something associated with string (1971). After the interview with
711 the boy, the parents confirmed his obsessive preoccupations with a
8 piece of string, which they had not mentioned before.
9 Winnicott tries to open up the situation by explaining to the
10 mother her boys fear of separation from his mother. She is, of
1 course, sceptical. Six months later, she is convinced that it is true.
2 Considering other details about the lack of contact between the
3 mother and the boy, Winnicott concludes that the string is used as
4 a denial of separation, rather than as a technique of communication
5 becoming a thing in itself, an expression reminiscent of Bion that
6 we do not find anywhere else in Winnicott. In a note added in 1969,
7 Winnicott sadly came to the conclusion that this boy could not be
8 cured of his illness.
9 There were no significant changes from the first time Winnicott
211 saw the boy at seven, and ten years later. The boy could not be kept
1 from running back to his home from wherever he was placed. In
2 adolescence he became addicted to drugs and played with a rope,
3 hanging himself upside-down (perhaps symbolizing the murdering
4 of time). Nobody dared call his toys toys. I see this case as a
5 chronic repetitive compulsionmaybe related to separation anxi-
6 ety marked by its denial, but also characterized in Freudian terms
7 as a predominance of loss and no possibility of substituting for real-
8 ity. Playing is very restricted and its creative power is limited to
9 producing icons of separations.
30 Two other examples are also illustrative of Winnicotts ideas. In
1 the chapter Playing: a theoretical statement, Winnicott describes
2 the case of Edmund, aged two and a half, and Diana, aged five. In
3 both cases the children were not the object of the consultations, but
4 came along with their mothers. Winnicott had to accept them. Each
5 of these consultations turned into double consultations, with
6 Winnicott listening to the mother and still keeping an eye on the
7 children. Edmund very quickly asks, after a few minutes: Where
8 are the toys? That was the only thing he said throughout the hour.
911 While Winnicott was talking with the mother, Edmund started to
18 ANDR GREEN
111 play, putting small train parts on the table, joining them up. Soon,
2 though he was only two feet apart from the mother, he came back
3 to her and got on to her lap. After about twenty minutes he began
4 to liven up, getting a fresh supply of toys. The mother explained
5 that her boy needed contact with her breast as well as with her lap.
6 At one point, when he was trying to keep some distance from the
7 mother, he started stammering. As a baby he would refuse every-
8 thing except the breast, even the bottle. His attention was then
9 caught by one end of a piece of string. Sometimes he would make
10 a gesture resembling the plugging in of the end of the string, as
1 though it were an electric flex, to his mothers thigh. To make a long
2 story short, the important thing is Winnicotts awareness that the
3 boys play was illustrative of what the mother was talking about,
4 although it was she who was talking to Winnicott. He writes: As
5 it happened, I was mirroring what was taking place and giving it a
6 quality of communication. This mirroring situation seemed to him
711 to be fundamental.
8 In this case we can observe the boys apparent indifference
9 about what was happening between the mother and Winnicott.
20 Edmund did not seem to be interested or to care. The reality of the
1 situation was not denied, hidden by some sort of screen. But this
2 situation at first escaped the observerwho appeared blind. Only
3 Winnicott managed to understand that the boys play was another
4 dramatized and displaced version of what the mother was talk-
511 ing about. If we consider the couple loss and substitution, we see
6 that substitution completely covers the threatening of loss by
7 disguising it in the childs play. The mirroring situation was not
8 only Winnicotts understanding, but also the childs playing activ-
9 ity mirroring the relationship between the mothers narration and
311 her listener. Play here is the result of an attempt at transformation
1 and manages to cheat any observer other than Winnicott or any
2 other psychoanalyst. We are not here in a situation of rigid repeti-
3 tive compulsion but in a trajectory that goes to and fro between the
4 mother and Edmund. We can see that, far from realizing where he
5 stands, he seems himself to be lost. While wanting to be with his
6 mother, he tries, unsuccessfully, to escape her. As Winnicott says:
7 the boy communicates an ebb of movement in him away from, and
8 back to, dependence (Winnicott, 1971). We can define this play as
911 the impossibility of abandoning reduplication with an attempt to
111 become distant from the object. On the whole, the mother
2 responded adequately.
3 But the most interesting example is Diana. One cannot forget, of
4 course, that she is five years old and in any case has a more complex
5 psychic organization than Edmund.
6 As in the previous case, Winnicott had to conduct two consulta-
711 tions in parallel: one with the mother, who is there for herself, being
8 in distress, and simultaneously a play relationship with the
9 daughter, Diana. Winnicott accomplishes a threefold task: he has to
10 give full attention to the mother, play with the child, and record the
1 nature of Dianas play so as to write his paper. Diana presents
2 herself at the front door, putting forward a teddy bear. Here, we see
3 the play preceding the consultation: Diana is using the teddy bear
4 as a representative of herself. This is probably why Winnicott,
5 before starting the consultation or even looking at the mother,
6 addresses Diana; first he asks her the name of the teddy bear. Just
7 Teddy, she replies. We shall see the multiple identity of Teddy:
8 he can stand as a representative of Diana, or as her ill brother, or
9 as Dianas imaginary child. After a while, probably feeling over-
211 whelmed and unable to give the mother the attention she needs,
1 Winnicott suddenly puts his ear to the teddy bear (using the tran-
2 sitional object in order to enable the situation to change and move
3 into some other space) and says to Diana: I heard him say some-
4 thing. I think he wants someone to play with. Thus, he does not
5 leave the child alone, but enhances an imaginary relationship. He
6 tells the child about a woolly lamb that she would find at the other
7 end of the room. Acting in this way, Winnicott stimulates her mater-
8 nal identification. Then Diana puts the teddy bear and the lamb
9 (which was considerably bigger than the bear) together; here
30 Winnicott confesses that perhaps his suggestion was in the hope of
1 getting the bear out of his jacketDiana had stuffed it in his breast-
2 pocket, curious to see how far it would go down. Her play there-
3 fore alluded to her brothers birth and Winnicotts response, calling
4 the lamb to join in the play, was perfectly logical, though, I believe,
5 unconscious. Diana decided that teddy and the lamb were her chil-
6 dren. She emphasized the fact that they were not twins: the lamb
7 was to be born first and only then the teddy. After the birth was
8 finished, she put the newly-born baby in a bed she had improvised,
911 placing each of them at separate ends in order to prevent them from
20 ANDR GREEN
111 meeting in the middle and fighting under the bedclothes. After a
2 while, she placed them peacefully at the top of the bed. She then
3 fetched a lot of toys and played with them. Winnicotts prcis of this
4 is: The playing was orderly and there were several different
5 themes that developed, each one kept separate from the other.
6 Winnicott joins in the girls play spontaneously and exclaims: Oh!
7 Look! You are putting on the floor around the babies heads the
8 dreams that they are having while they are asleep! (Winnicott,
9 1971).
10 The child, intrigued by the idea, was developing various themes
1 as if dreaming the dream for the babies. This shift of emphasis
2 allows Winnicott to come back to the mother, who cries about her
3 other childs cardiac illness. (Diana says: He has a hole in his
4 heart.) Winnicott comments on the mothers crying about her ill
5 son. The communication being direct and factual, Diana is reas-
6 sured.
711 I shall now pause to make some observations on these examples
8 chosen by Winnicott. Both children show not only a capacity to be
9 alone in the presence of the mother, but also in the presence of a
20 mother talking to a third person whom she wants to seenot about
1 themselves, but because of her own distress. In one case we see how
2 difficult it is for the child to be separated from the mother, but what
3 seems important to me is Winnicotts awareness that the childs
4 play reproduces in action what the mother and himself were talk-
511 ing about, even when that was about the child himself. With
6 Edmund there is an unconscious will to reproduce and transform
7 what is perceived from reality, even in a limited way. Nevertheless,
8 play appears as a development of the relation to reality and a
9 rebuilding of a transposed and created reality. But in Dianas case,
311 the play constantly increases its meaning, extends its connection,
1 and becomes more complex by including a potential dream that is
2 largely the same as the play but in a disguised way.
3 In the second case, i.e. with Diana, play is not only a reaction of
4 something happening in reality but is a creation in itself, involving
5 first a transitional object (the teddy bear) that she has to introduce
6 into Winnicotts pocket as if he were pregnantjust like the mother
7 when she was expecting the ill child. There is a concern of how far
8 the teddy bear can go down (perhaps being aborted or falling
911 through a hole?). A polysemous fantasy develops wherein the two
111 animals are exposed to fight in the middle of the bed under the
2 clothes. This symbolism is probably a shift to the parents primal
3 scene, then sleeping quietly. But the most amazing thing is
4 Winnicotts interpretation of the toys that Diana puts at the end of
5 the imaginary bed: i.e., that they represent the dreams that the tran-
6 sitional objects have while they are asleep. To me this is an essen-
711 tial step forward, because reflection is no longer limited to
8 reproduce more or less in disguise what is taking place in reality, as
9 with Edmund, but demonstrates to a certain degree how play can
10 represent a dream of which we know nothing, which is created by
1 the transitional objects themselves. It is a movement of inwardness
2 as deep as a dream, apparently incoherent, made of shreds and
3 patches, a product of the rearrangement of both elements of inter-
4 nal and external reality. Play is a manifestation of the mind that I
5 understand as being the result of undoing the pieces belonging to
6 reality, in order to recombine them and create a potential existence.
7 What I am attempting to say is that it is not enough to interpret
8 the content of the play; we have to understand its structure.
9 Perhaps am I not fully satisfied with a definition of play in terms of
211 transitional phenomena, or standing between internal and external
1 reality, symbolizing a potential space of a reunion between the
2 mother and the baby at the place and time where separation took
3 place. What I need to understand is how perceptions and fantasies
4 are the reproductions of an experience both internal and external
5 and, even more, to be able to perceive in play the extension of the
6 mirroring relationship, its dynamics in a system more or less open
7 to new developments, and the reflection inside the play through
8 which we may understand the interconnected fantasies as well as
9 their possibility of being transposed in another unconscious struc-
30 tureas the formation of a dream.
1 In a few words, playing, fantasizing, creating fictions, telling
2 tales, and even imagining the dreams that appear in the play,
3 belong to one and the same world. Its interpretation is bound to the
4 complexity of the inter-connexion and the transformation of
5 communication through meaning accompanied by the changing
6 identity of the addressees. Compared to other structures marked by
7 primary processes such as dreams, fantasies, and so on, I suggest
8 that playing differs from them because it is three-dimensional, not
911 because it has depth but because it looks like reality.
22 ANDR GREEN
111 One element not to be forgotten is that even when the child
2 plays alone, there is always someone watching or, as in the situa-
3 tion we described, someone talking to someone else about what is
4 going on. It may be difficult for the analyst to know where he
5 stands in this situation. Instead of thinking that he is systematically
6 in the place of the mother, he may also be in the place of the person
7 to whom the mother is speaking. It is important never to forget the
8 place of the analytic third, and also always to remember that
9 between the play and the person (adultchild), there is always an
10 invisible screen that forbids too direct interpretations. Just as free
1 association is essential to analytic work, play has to be considered
2 as a creation of free association processes.
3 It is not quite clear to me why Winnicott gave the chapter
4 following Playing: a theoretical statementwhich is so accom-
5 plished and gives the feeling that he perfectly understood and had
6 definitely dealt with the subjectthe title of Playing: a creative
711 activity, and the search of the self; it is so different from the preced-
8 ing one.
9 I believe that Winnicott was here tackling the problem of the
20 pre-condition of play. Winnicott says that only in playing is
1 communication possible and the individual able to be creative.
2 Creative experiences are sometimes the only possible way for the
3 individual to be himself. Creativity is not a specialized activity but
4 a feature of life and total living.
511 What is important in this perspective is to react on non-purpo-
6 sive state, a condition close to the supposed unintegrated state of
7 the beginning of life to which one has to come back. The search of
8 the self has to go back to formlessness. Non-purposive being, form-
9 less mind activity, are free from anxiety and defence. These are con-
311 ditions favourable for a search of the self. It is difficult not to think
1 about free association as a first step towards this aim. Winnicott
2 gives an illustration of a case that he has seen in a very long session
3 (the patient needed a session of indefinite length, once a week, after
4 having had treatment five times a week). Tolerance of chaos during
5 the session may lead at the end to a finding of the lost self. There
6 is not a single element of play in the paper. There are, instead, lots
7 of destructive thoughts related to others or about herself, lots of
8 catastrophic fantasies, the feeling of never being oneself, memories
911 of feeling empty. After an hour and a half, the patient feels: Just
111 drifting like the clouds, and then the negative feelings return with
2 the impression of having spoilt her life and not really being in the
3 session. When finally Winnicott has the impression that the patient
4 is in the session, he gives this interpretation to her: All sorts of
5 things happen and they wither. This is the myriad deaths you have
6 died. But if someone is there, someone who can give you back what
711 happened, then the details dealt with in this way become part of
8 you, and do not die (Winnicott, 1971).
9 Though the interpretation demonstrates Winnicotts creativity
10 more than the patients, he also introduces a very important idea:
1 however bad or negative are the experiences, the presence of some-
2 one just watching, acting as a mirror, gives to the scattered part
3 a unity that is reflected to the patient and becomes part of him. We
4 have some evidence of Winnicotts intuition being right when the
5 patient confesses later in the session that she made use in her room
6 of a lot of mirrors for some person to reflect back. But there is no one.
7 This is exactly what Winnicott does for her; in taking notes, writ-
8 ing interpretations he will never tell, being present, waiting for the
9 time when she will be able to be herself, Winnicott is the mirror
211 who reflects something other than the negative hallucination that
1 the patient has of her own image.
2 But we now come to a general conclusion, as Winnicott beauti-
3 fully formulates to the patient: It was yourself you were searching
4 (1971). The patient responded after a while: Yes, I see one could
5 postulate the existence of a Me from the question as from the
6 searching. This to me sounds unexpectedly very Cartesian. The
7 theoretical statement closes the chapter:
8
9 The searching can come only from desultory formless functioning
or perhaps from rudimentary playing, as if in a neutral zone. It is
30
only here in this unintegrated state of the personality, that which
1
we call creative, can appear. This, if reflected back, but only if
2 reflected back, becomes part of the organised individual personality
3 and eventually this in summation makes the individual to be to be
4 found and eventually enable himself or herself to postulate the exis-
5 tence of the self. [Winnicott, 1971]
6
7 I have some doubt that Winnicott really wanted to be found, as he
8 explained that the true self is hidden, secret and mute; maybe it is
911 in speculation of the formlessness or in elementary play.
24 ANDR GREEN
111 There is no play without reflection. Even when the child plays
2 alone, someone in his mind is looking at his play, someone who
3 maybe understands the play that he himself does not understand.
4 From that chapter on we shall see that most of the other chapters
5 will include a reference to reflection. With regard to the distorted
6 reflection to which Winnicott alludes in his famous interpretation to
7 a male patient who had to deny and keep as far as possible from
8 consciousness the non-masculine element of his personality, we
9 note that Winnicott says to him: I am listening to a girl, I know
10 perfectly well that you are a man, but I am listening to a girl and I
1 am talking to a girl. I am telling this girl: You are talking about
2 penis envy (Winnicott, 1971).
3 Winnicott makes it clear in his interpretation, which has been
4 compared to playing, that it was hearing that was like a represen-
5 tative of the mothers look: This madness of mine enabled him to
6 see himself as a girl from my position (ibid.). This is a good example
711 of a distorting mirror.
8 In some other chapters we again encounter the importance of
9 reflection, as in Mirror rle of mother and family in child devel-
20 opment. We see, therefore, that it is not enough to compare
1 psychotherapy with the overlap of two curtains: a third element
2 must come into playand this is their potential mutual reflection.
3 If we now turn towards the theory and the area of illusion
4 between the mother (breast) and the infant, we also imply an
511 element of reflection. Maybe the origin of this reflectivity is to be
6 found in Winnicotts thinking, in an unfinished book. The inter-
7 mediary area does not exist from the start. It is an attempt to reunify
8 what has been separated at the place and time of separation. Of this
9 occasion, Winnicott says something so bold that he is afraid of
311 spelling it out: The intermediary stage is referred to as a layer of
1 the mind constituted of an aspect of the mother and an aspect of the
2 baby, both being mixed in one (Winnicott, 1971).
3 This for me involves some kind of inner reflection between the
4 two parts that the infant will try to find again in the intermediary
5 area. I suspect this to be related to the topic of transference. In the
6 cases quoted of Edmund and Diana, we have seen how reflection
7 is imprisoned in the first one, and open in the second. This hypoth-
8 esis also applies to the delocalization of cultural experience. The
911 value of Winnicotts thesis is the interrelation between the inter-
111 mediate area of transitional phenomena, its location between inter-

2 nal and external reality, and its connection with symbolization.
3 When we speak of cultural experience, play comes to the fore in
4 certain privileged domains. To play, is to act. It is difficult for me
5 not to conclude by speaking about theatre, because there is in the
6 theatre a special occurrence that is worth thinking about. We all
711 know the existence in some plays of play within the play: Hamlet
8 and The Tempest easily come to mind, but to me the most astonish-
9 ing example is A Midsummer Nights Dream. Let us understand that
10 reflection is not enough; what we need in order to understand the
1 mind is the reflection of reflectionas in the playing within
2 A Midsummer Nights Dream. When we can arrive at a point of
3 sophistication where a player can say, playing his part in the play
4 that is within the play:
5
6
In this same interlude it doth befall
7
That Ione Snout by namepresent a wall.
8 And such a wall as I would have you think
9 That had in it a crannied hole or chink,
211 Through which the lovers, Pyramus and Thisbe,
1 Did whisper often, very secretly.
2 This loam, this roughcast, and this stone doth show
3 That I am that same wall; the truth is so.
4
5
The mirror becomes a wall represented by a man with a hole
6
through which we whisper, often very secretly, with our patients.
7
The truth is so.
8
9
30
1 References
2
3 Freud, S. (1908e). S.E., IX: 141154. London: Hogarth.
4 Freud, S. (1924e). The loss of reality in neurosis and psychosis. S.E.,
5 XIX: London: Hogarth.
6 Freud, S. (1926d). S.E., XX: 167. London: Hogarth.
7 Freud, S. (1942a)[190506]. S.E., VII: 30. London: Hogarth.
8 Green, A. (1999). The Dead Mother: The Work of Andr Green. London:
911 Routledge.
26 ANDR GREEN
111 Winnicott, D. W. (1945). Primitive emotional development. International

2 Journal of Psycho-Analysis, 26.
3 Winnicott, D. W. (1971), Playing and Reality. London: Tavistock.
4 Winnicott, D. W. (1988). Human Nature, C. Bollas, M. Davis, &
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711 Vote of thanks
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O n behalf of us all I would like to thank Professor Green for a
fascinating lecture.
As always, Andr has been provocative. There is a tendency to
3 canonize many authorsbut certainly that is not what Andr ever
4 does; he always urges us primarily to read, and then to read again.
5 He teaches us that just because something has not been looked
6 at, does not mean that it is not worth looking at. That, basically, is
7 the message that I have received from him tonight: it is no use
8 repeating nice little packages and saying we need take just these,
9 and then off we go. Andr has challenged all of us here tonight;
30 some of us did not like it, that is quite obvious, but frankly I for one
1 did not expect anything else! But this is success. This is tonights
2 value.
3 When Andr speaks to people, he invariably asks if they have
4 actually read the paper, idea, or book that was being considered.
5 Too many of us tend to read between the linesand not the lines
6 themselves. It happens far, far too often.
7 I am sure that even those of you who are not perhaps as pleased
8 as you expected to be with the lecture, who have not been
911 massaged in a nice way but have, rather, been stimulatedand
27
28 VOTE OF THANKS
111 even perhaps pricked a littlewill nevertheless join me in thanking

2 Professor Andr Green for his masterly exposition of some most
3 recondite concepts that are not perhaps noticed in the way that they
4 should be, and not noticed often enough. Thank you very much.
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711 Addendum to lecture
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211 Conjectures about Winnicotts unconscious
1 counter-transference in the case of Masud Khan, in the
2 light of the Wynne Godley case
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I
4 n February 2001 Wynne Godley published a paper, Saving
5 Masud Khan (2001), which created a great deal of concern
6 among the analysts of the British Psychoanalytical Society, but
7 not only among them. It generated much discussion and brought
8 more plainly into the open the question of boundary violations. The
9 Societys Ethics Committee, represented by A.-M. Sandler, replied
30 officially to Godley, addressing many of his complaints (2004).
1 Exceptionally, although not uniquely, prior to this particular inci-
2 dent, other papers had dealt with the Masud Khan casemostly by
3 Linda Hopkins, who is currently working on a biography of him.
4 In one of her papers, published before Godleys paper appeared,
5 she deals specifically with Winnicotts analysis of Masud Khan
6 (1998).
7 This Addendum proposes to show how Winnicotts unconscious
8 counter-transference was a contributory factor in the failure of the
911 treatment. Its failure was also the result of some of Winnicotts
29
30 ANDR GREEN
111 debatable ideas on technique, which have their own blind spots. All
2 of this, combined, offered little hopeif there was any to begin
3 withof saving Masud Khan. Furthermore, it seeks to illustrate not
4 only how play can transgress the limits of the setting but how it can
5 also be turned into foul play (as in Hamlet). Linda Hopkins has
6 dealt in her paper with Masud Khans application of play tech-
7 niques to analytic consultation and the treatment of adults (Hop-
8 kins, 2000); here, however, we venture beyond what she reports.
9 Before continuing my discussion, I would inform the reader that
10 I had a long acquaintance with Masud Khan and that it ended on
1 unfriendly terms. That has no connection with the present matter. I
2 also personally met Wynne Godley on three occasions: the first time
3 was long before the publication of his article, and at the time I was
4 not even aware that he had been in analysis; the subsequent
5 encounters occurred after I had read it. I must stress that nothing in
6 the piece that follows has been drawn from my relations with either
711 Masud Khan or Wynne Godley.
8 My principal sources are Godleys article (2001), Rodmans biog-
9 raphy on Winnicott (2003) and, to a lesser extent, Linda Hopkins
20 papers before 2001. These have been used to provide an analytic
1 aprs coup interpretation of the events in order to try to explain what
2 may have happened, over and beyond Godleys description.
3 Finally, I would add that Wynne Godley, in my strongest opinion,
4 is not the kind of patient to leave any doubt about his complaints.
511 In the beginning of his paper Wynne Godley describes concisely
6 what he terms his state of dissociation. His self-observation, in
7 few words, is convincing. He describes his false self as being split
8 from the body. He tells of living in a waking dream, of his para-
9 doxical insensitivity, of his sense of estrangement when faced with
311 unpredicted situations, of his panic attacks, delusional beliefs, etc.
1 All of this fits in remarkably with Winnicotts clinical descrip-
2 tions, which do not belong to the range of neurotic disorders. We
3 can therefore imagine that Winnicott was quite familiar with this
4 type of pathology when he referred the case to Masud Khan. It has
5 been suggested, though this is open to question, that Anna Freud
6 was asked for her approvalGodley having married Kathleen
7 Garman Epstein, Lucian Freuds first wife.
8 I shall not describe the accumulation of traumas in Godleys
911 case history as the reader may refer to them direct elsewhere. What
ADDENDUM TO LECTURE 31
111 I wish to focus upon is a maternal relationship on the one hand,

2 involving a careless, neglectful, over-seductive mother (she used to
3 walk about naked in front of the child, creating an erotic intimacy
4 with him, and confess to him her sexual pleasure with men) and on
5 the other, a paternal relationship involving an impotent (sup-
6 posedly), humiliating, cruel, shallow, invalid, and severely alco-
711 holic father. This family situation caused to develop in the child not
8 only a huge narcissistic retreat and organization but also a feminine
9 identification mixed with denial of the mothers carelessness.
10 In spite of his mothers mismanagement the boy, fascinated as
1 he was by her seductive manoeuvres, did not complain about
2 her. Towards the father, however, one suspects a strong hatred
3 due to his ineffectiveness. I would suggest that the child blamed him
4 for his inability to offer any grounds for a masculine identification.
5 It is generally known how Winnicott underestimated the impor-
6 tance of the father and of sexuality, and denied their fundamental
7 role in the shaping of the personality. For instance, no oneneither
8 Winnicott nor Khanseemed to pay any attention to the fact that at
9 seventeen Godley confessed to ignoring the existence of the vagina,
211 and to not knowing that men ejaculate. These are far from ordinary
1 sexual symptoms: a kind of split in the body amounting to an ampu-
2 tation of sexuality. It would be unreasonable to think that these
3 symptoms could be cured automatically after caring about the self,
4 whether you call it artificial or false. These facts may be related to
5 Godleys confession of the skill he acquired during childhood that
6 he described as a spectacular ability to not see, identify or shrewdly
7 evaluate people and situations. I believe that this, which I connect
8 with negative hallucination, always means that one looks for similar
9 character traits towards the significant people of ones environment.
30 This is what happened in Godleys so-called analysis between
1 analyst and consultant analyst.
2 With such a disturbed background one would expect many
3 occurrences of symptoms along with different sorts of fixations.
4 Wynne Godley, despite having many reasons to be angry with his
5 mother, apparently did not hate her. He seems also to have liked
6 his stepmother (who eventually committed suicide). Indeed, it
7 is not stated anywhere that he had difficult relationships with
8 other women. He seemed to have realized at some time during the
911 analysis, and as a kind of revelation: My father hated me. There is
32 ANDR GREEN
111 no evidence that his father brutalized or ill-treated him. One might,
2 of course, relate that hatred to the projection of the son experiencing
3 excessively erotic, too-close intimacy with his mother, whom he vis-
4 ited at her home (his parents having been separated from his birth).
5 I am not saying that one should understand this as a manifestation
6 of an Oedipus complex, for that was not structured at the time.
7 In any event, neither Winnicott nor Khan seem to have paid
8 attention to that central fact: the hatred of the father. It is my
9 assumption that Godley came to realize that his fathers inconsis-
10 tent behaviour, with its heavy alcoholism, was an unconscious way
1 of attacking the father image. It was, furthermore, to induce con-
2 tempt; above all, it was to remove any possibility of a positive iden-
3 tification in manhood. A sort of hallucinatory vision involving
4 his father had accompanied this: Unless he justifies himself I
5 must save him, thus witnessing a role-reversal in the parentchild
6 relationship, a splitting of the hate, a reparation process and, as it
711 were, a secret oath: I must save him (meaning, in truth, I must
8 sacrifice myself).
9 Godley seems to have been quite aware of this when he chose
20 the title for his paper. There was, however, no reference as to how
1 it had been interpreted. What I am implying is that, consciously or
2 unconsciously, Khan did everything that was possible to confirm
3 Godleys secret promise by repeating the fathers behaviour (being
4 also an awful drunkard), by multiplying boundary violations, by
511 trying to impress his patient with his important relations, by inter-
6 fering with his marital relationship, by telling him about his own
7 marriage with a famous dancer, by being scornful and projective,
8 by keeping him at a distance, by giving savage interpretations
9 about the supposed (?) wish of the patient to be cuddled by him,
311 etc., etc.,but also by repeating the behaviour of the promiscuous
1 mother. Because Godley remained unimpressed, Khan felt he had
2 to double the dose: associating the patient and his wife with his
3 own social life. During a party, he is said to have declared to an
4 elegant woman attending: He and I the same, Aristocrats. This is
5 a key phrase. Khan was playing sameness although he always felt
6 the British regarded him as an inferior, a native. In fact, there could
7 be no equality in the relationship since systematically Khan was
8 obsessed with dominating his patient, humiliating him, and contin-
911 uously boasting about his own exploits.
111 Khan had made a serious mistake in underlining the aristocratic

2 background of patient and analyst. As for Godley, the son of a Lord
3 who thought himself so noble that nobody would notice he had
4 been drinking, it was easy to see that the condition was a painful
5 one. The presence of the father was that of a shadow, the son seeing
6 him as an invalid and very different from ordinary fathers. Khan
711 never lost an opportunity to draw attention to his own powerful
8 father, who had made him his sole heir even though he had seven
9 other children. On the other hand, he rarely mentioned his fathers
10 marriage to a woman sometimes referred to as a courtesan but who
1 may have been a dancer; Khans mother had been a drug addict
2 and had given birth to an illegitimate child just before Khan. The
3 comparison with Godleys family situation is striking: an impotent
4 father married to a woman who proclaimed her right to promiscu-
5 ity. One might imagine that not only did Khan idealize his father
6 which he deniedbut also, as suggested by his violence (like that
7 of Godleys father), that the father image was less prestigious and
8 more terrorized than the one presented by the son. Both Godleys
9 father and Khan made very expensive gifts to Godleyas if asking
211 the son for forgiveness.
1 Now what about Winnicott in all this? Winnicotts own father,
2 although mayor of Plymouth and respected in the city, was always
3 considered a member of the lower middle class. Winnicott could not
4 identify in the least with the son of a worthy burgher. (Here perhaps
5 we may remind ourselves that Winnicott, though divorced from his
6 first wife and involved in a longstanding relationship, nevertheless
7 had to await his fathers death before remarrying.) It seems that
8 Khans ostentatiously provocative behaviour (involving the jet-set
9 society) was a kind of Don Juanistic accumulation of sinful acts to pro-
30 voke the wrath of the Lord (his own). Winnicott, however, instead of
1 interpreting Khans wish to be punished by him, kept silentQui ne
2 dit mot consent; he even indulged in telephone calls during Godleys
3 sessions in which erotic jokes were exchanged that the patient could
4 perfectly well overhear. Winnicott would not at any cost adopt a
5 prohibitive attitude towards Khan until certain limits were exceeded.
6 What we do know is that Khan was infuriated by Winnicotts passiv-
7 ity; Winnicott concentrated all his hopes on the virtue of holding.
8 I believe that Khan tried to seduce Winnicott by his boundary
911 violations (Rodman, 2003), just as he had seduced his own father.
34 ANDR GREEN
111 But Winnicotts naturetoo nice, as he qualified himself

2 certainly rendered him incapable of being an authoritarian figure.
3 Nothing is more revealing than Khans own words at Winnicotts
4 memorial meeting: Some of usand I am one of thosethink he
5 let the side down by his special stance of humility, which is larger
6 than arrogance and authority.
7 So. Winnicott sought to resist Khans provocation. Did
8 Winnicott realize that his obstinacy had inflicted a narcissistic blow
9 on Khan, who felt humiliated by the modesty of his analyst, a bril-
10 liant mind who could have become the King of Analysts to the
1 Prince that he pretended to be? Winnicott also humiliated Khan by
2 limiting his power of seduction. Performing editorial work after his
3 analysis on Sunday mornings, Khan even boasted of having edited
4 much of Winnicotts output in the last twenty years of his life
5 (Rodman, 2003). Joyce Coles, Winnicotts secretary, expressed
6 doubts about this. Yet he was never invited to lunch and Winni-
711 cotts second wife, Clare, was fiercely opposed to giving him access
8 to the privacy of the Winnicotts home. After Winnicotts death she
9 also declined Khans request to become her husbands literary
20 executor. She gave him nothing. This further increased Khans
1 hostility to women and his inability to get the better of them (quite
2 unlike his boasts about men), coupled with the disappointing real-
3 ization that Winnicott preferred his wife to him. Not being made
4 Winnicotts literary heir was a traumatic blow. Khan tried to take
511 revenge on Godley by endeavouring to break up his marriage; he
6 introduced him to another woman and suggested that she, who
7 already had a child by another man (just like Khans own mother),
8 would be a more suitable partner for him. Khan also secretly
9 invited Godleys wife to an interview with him. Ironically, at one
311 time, Khans wife was in such a bad way that Winnicott asked Khan
1 to yield up his sessions to her!
2 It is plausible to claim that Khan made every effort to ruin
3 Godleys marriage by suggesting another partner whom he could
4 totally control. The alternative partner was one of his analysands.
5 In fact, Khan wanted to succeed where he had failed with Winni-
6 cottfor he hated Winnicotts wifeby breaking the husband
7 wife relationship. Time and again Winnicotts wife showed great
8 pride in her success of making her husband potent, thus infuriating
911 Khan.
111 I presume that when Khan abruptly decided to interrupt his

2 fifteen years of analysis, it was because he had been discussing with
3 Winnicott the above-mentioned literary execution with the aim of
4 obtaining from Winnicott some form of official approval. He failed
5 to do so because of Clares strong opposition.
6 We cannot charge Winnicott with being mistaken and seduced
711 by Khan, nor of his having taken pleasure in Khans arrogant
8 behaviour, which Winnicott himself could not afford. I would say
9 that Winnicotts focus on primary emotional development, disbelief
10 in sexuality, and his very late discovery of the role of the father,
1 together led him to give up on any analysis of Masud Khans homo-
2 sexuality and masochism. Winnicott would not believe that these
3 could be responsible for his pathology, just as he did not believe in
4 interpretations. I would like to add that the choice is not between
5 not interpreting and interpreting in the Kleinian way. In any event,
6 to believe that a holding relationship has the capacity to over-
7 come these psychopathic behaviours is more than optimistic; but,
8 by all accounts, that belief maintained a mutually seductive rela-
9 tionshipa major error.
211 Was Masud Khan analysable? I guess many analysts today
1 would say that he was not. I do not blame Winnicott for his
2 mistakes, but I do regret his being blind to that part of psychoana-
3 lytic theory that was too close to his own pathology (being too nice,
4 or being devilish). The result is not only our concern at boundary
5 violationsthough this would deserve another paperbut also on
6 the sexualization of post-transference relationships.
7 What is tragic in the intertwined histories and misfortunes of
8 Godley, Khan, and Winnicott is that psychoanalysis has been the
9 occasion of a sinister farce, of fateful repetitions, where compul-
30 sions belonging to one individuals history are transferred on to
1 another in the wrong way, from analyst to patient when it should
2 be the reversethereby alienating the individual from his own
3 unconscious, without any real analysis.
4 Aside from all the mismanagements within the case, one thing
5 strikes me in particular: it seems as if Godleys traumatic back-
6 ground induced a narcissistic structure that Khan, despite his acute-
7 ness, did not know how to handle. Wounded by his own
8 therapeutic failure, Khan had the mad idea of trying to cure
911 Godleys artificial self, i.e., pseudo narcissistic, by projecting his
36 ANDR GREEN
111 own princely narcissism on to Godley in the hope that it would

2 change his into a more committed one. He did not succeed in his
3 methodfounded on shared aristocracy. Instead, Khan became
4 more and more furious, grew ever more dangerously psychopathic.
5 Above all, he felt his grandiose self was wounded. Having trans-
6 gressed all boundaries, Winnicott could no longer remain a good
7 enough mother who cures everything, and he paid heavily for his
8 mistake. He never showed his patients that he wished to embody
9 the paternal law. Winnicotts remark about the case, having cut
10 short the relationship between Godley and Khan, is interesting; he
1 refers, as if in disgust, to: all that social stuff.
2 Homosexuality is not only a sexual perversion; it may also be
3 found in paranoia. It is a disguised way of castrating the father,
4 stealing and destroying the fathers penis because of envy. It is a
5 subtle, indirect way of dominating the envied father figure who is
6 also debased by the sons behaviour. Moreover, it is a way to take
711 destructive revenge on the woman to whom the son is finally
8 preferred: through the cheating, the lying (and even the stealing).
9 Winnicott, however, did not take into consideration this aspect of
20 Freudian theory.
1 In Shakespeare, Prince Hal, after his fathers death, becomes the
2 worthy and virtuous King Henry V. Prince Khan could never
3 achieve this transformation because he never had access to the
4 crown, the one crown he really envied and which is only obtained
511 through writing. Masud Khans papers were well received when
6 they first appeared. Winnicott himself praised them. He even
7 backed Khan when he applied to the British Society, ignoring the
8 normal rule of neutrality. Moreover, Winnicotts support led him to
9 believe that his seduction game had worked and that he would
311 once more be made the unique heir! But it was doomed to failure.
1 Today, few, if any, refer to Khans work, whereas Winnicotts contin-
2 ues to be quoted, analysed and discussed. One might say, in spite
3 of the sound and fury, oblivion has had the better of Masud
4 Khanin all but the scandal.
5 I have tried to show the existence of a perversion of play in
6 Masud Khans treatment of Wynne Godley. But it was not only
7 present in the Godley case. Indeed, in Masud Khans papers he
8 reveals how he engaged in games of backgammon with some of his
911 patients, thereby misusing them also. He tells about another patient
111 who had arrived at his session accompanied by his dog that fright-
2 ened Khan. In the next session he hid behind the door of his
3 consulting-room and waited until the unwary patient entered,
4 before jumping on him and making barking noises at him like a
5 wild dog. He explained the lesson to his patient: This is to show
6 you how one can feel when you come into the consulting-room
711 with your hound. In Wynne Godleys case, however, the complic-
8 ity of others helped subtly to pervert the whole thing into a social
9 entertainment. Svetlana Beriosova, Khans wife, was treated at the
10 same time as her husband by Winnicott and was also conferred
1 with during some of his regular sessions. Not surprisingly, she
2 developed a deep scepticism about psychoanalysis.
3 How can we explain Winnicotts refusal, in the counter-trans-
4 ference process, to become a re-enactment of the paternal figure?
5 Winnicotts own father played a significant role when he repaired a
6 doll belonging to Winnicotts sister that Winnicott had badly
7 damaged. Perhaps his father should be thanked for this act, but on
8 the whole he remained distant towards his only son. He would
9 refer all his sons existential questions to the Bible, saying that
211 he would find the answers he looked for there. But in so doing, he
1 refused to assume a fundamental paternal responsibility: that of
2 being a model of masculine identification for his son. Most of the
3 time Winnicott was left in the company of his mother and sisters.
4 On reading the descriptions of Winnicotts parents in Rodmans
5 biography I cannot help believing that his motherallowing for the
6 possible limitations of a woman of her generation and character
7 was less involved than his father in the genesis of the false self in
8 Winnicotts personal experience. His father, it appears to me, was
9 more evocative of a false self: more concerned and preoccupied
30 with his own social position than with his sons difficulty in devel-
1 oping into a man. One example is his decision to send Winnicott off
2 to boarding-school for having pronounced rude words. Although
3 he was rather shallow, his son seemed to have feared him.
4 Ultimately, Masud Kahns provocations were to prove fruitless,
5 since no father figure emerged. Certainly, Winnicott admired
6 Khans skills and it is probable that his antisocial behaviour secretly
7 attracted him. However, it was a long time before Winnicott discov-
8 ered the importance of the father in accomplishing the process of
911 separation between mother and child. Indeed, this understanding
38 ANDR GREEN
111 was to come at the end of his life: too late to save Masud Kahn.
2 Winnicott had his first heart attack the same day his father died and
3 his heart succumbed totally a few years later. He died enlightened
4 but without ever having felt what it was to be a father. As for Khan,
5 he felt orphaned by Winnicotts death: abandoned and left alone to
6 struggle with his own self-destructive impulses. Nor could he
7 expect help from anyone any more, having disappointed even the
8 best of his friends. Anna Freud, to whom he went subsequently,
9 was incapable of embodying the paternal figureunlike potentially
10 her fatherthat he so craved. In one of his rages Khan said to
1 Godley: You are a very tiresome and disappointing man. Did he
2 likewise wish to be scourged by an angry word from Winnicott?
3 Who can say? For play toolike all human endeavourhas its
4 limits.
5
6
711 References
8
9 Godley, W. (2001) Saving Masud Khan. London Review of Books, 23(4):
20 Hopkins, L. (1998). D. W. Winnicotts analysis of Masud Khan.
1 Contemporary Psychoanalysis, 34(1).
2 Hopkins, L. (2000). Masud Khans application of Winnicotts play
3 techniques to analytic consultation and treatment of adults. Con-
4 temporary Psychoanalysis, 56(4).
511 Rodman, F. R. (2003). Winnicott: Life and Work. Perseus Publishing
6 House.
7 Sandler, A.-M. (2004). Institutional responses to boundary violations:
the case of Masud Khan. International Journal of Psychoanalysis, 85:
8
2742.
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Winnicott's Influence on Play and Reflection

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Winnicott's Influence on Play and Reflection

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Green prelims correx 1/28/05 5:05 PM Page i

111 THE DONALD WINNICOTT MEMORIAL LECTURE

111 the Winnicott Clinic of Psychotherapy decided how this should be

111 French psychiatrist at that time, as psychoanalysis had not then

111 before most continental psychoanalysts had begun to develop an

111 Today I am going to talk about Winnicotts last work, which I

PLAY AND REFLECTION IN DONALD WINNICOTTS WRITINGS 9

111 There is an intermediate state between this and interpersonal rela-

PLAY AND REFLECTION IN DONALD WINNICOTTS WRITINGS 11

PLAY AND REFLECTION IN DONALD WINNICOTTS WRITINGS 13

111 negative therapeutic reaction) is known in advance. Domination

111 Being present as an interested spectator at a spectacle or play

PLAY AND REFLECTION IN DONALD WINNICOTTS WRITINGS 15

111 denialnot to the point of behaving like them, but by adopting an

111 cheating, from which it is inseparable: to play into somebodys

PLAY AND REFLECTION IN DONALD WINNICOTTS WRITINGS 17

PLAY AND REFLECTION IN DONALD WINNICOTTS WRITINGS 19

PLAY AND REFLECTION IN DONALD WINNICOTTS WRITINGS 21

PLAY AND REFLECTION IN DONALD WINNICOTTS WRITINGS 23

PLAY AND REFLECTION IN DONALD WINNICOTTS WRITINGS 25

111 mediate area of transitional phenomena, its location between inter-

111 Winnicott, D. W. (1945). Primitive emotional development. International

111 even perhaps pricked a littlewill nevertheless join me in thanking

111 I wish to focus upon is a maternal relationship on the one hand,

111 Khan had made a serious mistake in underlining the aristocratic

111 But Winnicotts naturetoo nice, as he qualified himself

111 I presume that when Khan abruptly decided to interrupt his

111 own princely narcissism on to Godley in the hope that it would

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