The Holding Environment
The
Holding
Environment
By
David Wasdell
A critical analysis of D.W. Winnicott’s papers in ‘The Maturational Processes and the
Facilitating Environment’, with particular attention to Winnicott’s thesis that anxiety originates in the breakdown of the post-natal holding environment.
Produced By: Meridian Programme, Meridian House, 115 Poplar High Street, London E14
0AE, Hosted By: Unit for Research into Changing Institutions (URCHIN), charity reg. no.
284542
Web-site: www.meridian.org.uk
1
THE HOLDING ENVIRONMENT
[An analysis and critique of the analytic construct underlying the writing of D.W. Winnicott in his collection of papers entitle 'The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating
Environment', subtitled 'Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development', published by The
Hogarth Press and The Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London, 1976. The volume is No. 64 in the International Psycho-Analytical Library Edited by John D. Sutherland PhD., F.R.C.P.E.]
If Melanie Klein pressed the analysis of anxiety-defence mechanisms back behind the
Oedipus complex into the earlier infant relationship with the mother, then Winnicott takes the process one step further. He traces the development of these anxiety defences to failures in the 'holding environment' as he calls it, in the very earliest stages of being babe in arms. This paper examines Winnicott's development of the Kleinian position and seeks to push the argument even further back. The thesis is developed that the nexus or heart of the primitive paranoid-schizoid defences against anxiety lies in the loss nucleus of parturition, or birth trauma. This, it is argued, is the original failure of the holding environment and thus the precipitating matrix of anxiety and thus of the anxiety defences. The concentration of psycho-analysis on experience of deviance from the norm has blocked the development of insight into this basic mechanism, which is of course general, applying equally to
Holding
Environment
By
David Wasdell
A critical analysis of D.W. Winnicott’s papers in ‘The Maturational Processes and the
Facilitating Environment’, with particular attention to Winnicott’s thesis that anxiety originates in the breakdown of the post-natal holding environment.
Produced By: Meridian Programme, Meridian House, 115 Poplar High Street, London E14
0AE, Hosted By: Unit for Research into Changing Institutions (URCHIN), charity reg. no.
284542
Web-site: www.meridian.org.uk
1
THE HOLDING ENVIRONMENT
[An analysis and critique of the analytic construct underlying the writing of D.W. Winnicott in his collection of papers entitle 'The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating
Environment', subtitled 'Studies in the Theory of Emotional Development', published by The
Hogarth Press and The Institute of Psycho-Analysis, London, 1976. The volume is No. 64 in the International Psycho-Analytical Library Edited by John D. Sutherland PhD., F.R.C.P.E.]
If Melanie Klein pressed the analysis of anxiety-defence mechanisms back behind the
Oedipus complex into the earlier infant relationship with the mother, then Winnicott takes the process one step further. He traces the development of these anxiety defences to failures in the 'holding environment' as he calls it, in the very earliest stages of being babe in arms. This paper examines Winnicott's development of the Kleinian position and seeks to push the argument even further back. The thesis is developed that the nexus or heart of the primitive paranoid-schizoid defences against anxiety lies in the loss nucleus of parturition, or birth trauma. This, it is argued, is the original failure of the holding environment and thus the precipitating matrix of anxiety and thus of the anxiety defences. The concentration of psycho-analysis on experience of deviance from the norm has blocked the development of insight into this basic mechanism, which is of course general, applying equally to