Abstract

DETHIVILLE, Laura. Survive, she says. Winnicott e-prints [online]. 2011, vol.6, n.1, pp.50-65. ISSN 1679-432X.

The title of the book by Marguerite Duras that I'm adapting here is in fact Destroy, she says. Survive, destroy, surviving the destructivity that the patient must be able to experiment within a professionally reliable environment, which, as Winnicott states, "protects from the unforseeable, that is the task of the analyst ". Staying alive, being there, and being reliable, is the task Winnicott lays out for the analyst . It is about meeting the needs, and while avoiding using the patients to erotic or narcissistic aims. The theme is reliability meeting dependence. On the other hand, the patient should be able to use the analyst, to wear him down, and, for the analyst, to survive, in the sense of staying the same, as everything is playing out on "another stage ", to quote Octave Mannoni's beautiful phrase. Staying the same, surviving in the Winnicottian sense of the word, that is what is required from us. All other stance would be along the lines of a "let down", which would act out the original catastrophy. To engage in "care cure " is to embrace this ethic, to be the one who will "not let down".

Keywords : Winnicott; destruction; survival; reliability; ethics.

        · abstract in French | Portuguese     · text in French     · French ( pdf )