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From International Socialism, No.26, Autumn 1966, p.37.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’Callaghan for ETOL.
The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment
D.W. Winnicott
Hogarth, 42s.
These are the collected papers of a practising child psycho-analyst. He wants to show that Freudian theory of personality development applies in infancy. Freud began at early childhood. He writes with sympathy about the psychiatrically disturbed. He is a vulgar Freudian and an unintelligible writer whose precepts and generalisations are scattered about without development and with inadequate documentation. Although he represents the modern, ego-psychology trend in Freudian theory he hedges the position with such phrases as ‘real’ and ‘false’ selfs. A false self is one that, ‘destroys good prospects by a renunciation of every obvious advantage simply for the hidden advantage of gaining a feeling of reality.’ That is, selfs that consistently fail to introject and apply the dominant societal values are false selfs and conventional opportunism is the necessary condition of a healthy personality.
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Last updated on 14.12.2007