Donald Winnicott (1896 to 1971) was an English paediatrician and psychoanalyst who changed the way people think about babies, mothers and the beginnings of the self. He gave us the ‘good enough mother’, the ‘holding environment’, the ‘transitional object’ and the distinction between the true self and the false self. Therapeutic Shamanism draws on his good enough mother, read as a balance between holding a child too tightly and too loosely, in its teaching on the Mother-WoundMother-Wound. The near-universal injury of inadequate mothering in Taker culture, scaling from the personal wound to a collective distortion of the Mother archetype itself. Largely pre-verbal, it is healed not by insight but by receiving healthy mothering: from the Lower-World, the Power Animal’s unconditional love, and Mother Earth. More about this, and adds a place where the mothering a child missed can still be received: the Lower-WorldLower-World. The realm of Mother Earth: pure, unspoilt, wild nature, with no technology and no agriculture. Home of the Peoples and of our own Soul, and completely safe: feeling threatened in a journey is a reliable sign of not having reached it. Read the full answer.
Who was Donald Winnicott? #
A children’s doctor who became a psychoanalyst and stayed both. Winnicott trained in psychoanalysis whilst working as a paediatrician, and kept the two disciplines side by side throughout his career, which is why his ideas are so close to ordinary family life. He was close to Melanie Klein, and analysed her son, but disputed many of her views, and became a leading member of the ‘middle group’ of British psychoanalysts who belonged to neither of the two main camps.1 His last book, Playing and Reality, was published in 1971, the year he died.
What is a “good enough mother”? #
In the usual account of Winnicott’s idea, a mother who adapts almost completely to her newborn baby’s needs and then, little by little, lets that adaptation slip. A mother who never failed her child at all would do it no favours. The small, bearable failures of an ordinary devoted parent are how a child learns to cope with a world that will not always meet its wishes.2
Finding Your Deep Soul reads Winnicott’s idea as a balance. People often assume he chose the phrase because perfection is impossible, but on this reading what he meant was something subtler: a good enough mother is one who gets the balance right between emotionally holding a child too tightly and holding them too loosely.3 A mother who holds too tightly, often out of her own unmet needs, keeps the child too close to grow into emotional maturity; the child may stay overly bonded into adulthood, or rebel and find it hard to be vulnerable. A child held too loosely may not feel safe and welcome, and may “never really arrive and take their place in the world or their body”, growing up anxious and ungrounded, with little sense of belonging.4 See What are the Mother-Wound and the Father-Wound?
What did Winnicott mean by holding? #
The emotional and physical space in which a child feels safe enough to grow. Holding begins literally, in the mother’s arms, and becomes emotional, a matter of being kept in mind, contained, protected from more distress than the child can bear.5
Holding, in Therapeutic Shamanism’s terms, is part of what every child needs in order to thrive and not just survive: to feel loved, welcomed and wanted, with support, comfort and safe boundaries. Children in hunter-gatherer bands largely had that experience of mothering; these days some children do, and many do not.6 See How do embodiment, grounding and the nervous system support healing?
What are the transitional object and the true and false self? #
Two more of his lasting ideas. The transitional object is the blanket or teddy bear a small child cannot be parted from: the child’s first possession that is ‘not me’, a bridge between dependence and independence and between the child’s inner world and the shared outer one.7
The true self is the spontaneous, authentic core of a person, the part that feels alive and real; the false self is a compliant surface built to meet other people’s expectations and to protect the true self. Some false self is healthy, in the ordinary politeness everyone needs. Trouble comes when it takes over. In Winnicott’s words, “Only the True Self can be creative and only the True Self can feel real.”8 Something like it is found in the shamanic understanding that, in a domesticated culture, people send parts of themselves away in order to fit in, and are left weakened by the loss.9 See What is soul-loss?
Does this put the blame on mothers? #
Some people hear it that way. Sometimes a mother who finds parenting hard hears any talk of dysfunctional mothering as a verdict on her; sometimes people feel that criticising mothers is simply not allowed.10 Therapeutic Shamanism’s answer is that looking at dysfunctional mothering is not an attack on mothers or motherhood. Parents raise children with very little support and few healthy role models, so anyone who has done even a half-decent job has done something heroic. The same patterns apply to fathers, which is why the teaching speaks of a Father-Wound as well. And the reasons a parent struggled, real as they are, do not cancel out the impact on the child.11
Where does Therapeutic Shamanism go further than Winnicott? #
In where the healing can happen. The earliest wound with mother happens before we have words, so it is held in the body and is hard to reach through talking therapies alone; therapies that work with imagery, sensation and movement reach it better, and shamanic journeying, being largely non-verbal and deeply somatic, can be highly effective with it.12 In a Lower-World journey a person can have the experience of being nurtured as a baby, by a loving Human Mother in their Lower-World Tribe or, if that is too hard at first, by a mammal mother such as She-Bear or She-Wolf, and can begin to feel the secure attachment that was missing. Finding Your Deep Soul has an exercise for this, Journeying to Meet a Lower-World Mother. A wound with our own mother can also distort our picture of the Mother Archetype, and through it our relationship with Mother EarthMother Earth. The sacred Feminine pole: pure potential, from whom all the Peoples arise. The Lower-World is her realm, and she is all the realms: “The Earth is indeed our Mother.” More about this herself. See What are the Sacred Masculine and Sacred Feminine, Father Sky and Mother Earth?
