ARTIGOS

 

Heidegger and Winnicott¹

 

 

Zeljko Loparic

Professor-titular aposentado da UNICAMP e docente do Curso de Estudos Pós-graduados em Psicologia Clínica da PUCSP

 

 

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RESUMO

O presente artigo apresenta três teses principais. A primeira diz que, nos Seminários de Zollikon, Heidegger desenvolveu projeto de uma antropologia, patologia e terapia daseinsanalíticas no qual ele rejeita a metapsicologia de Freud, mas preserva suas descobertas fatuais e procedimentos de cura. A secunda tese sustenta que Winnicott introduziu um novo paradigma na psicanálise que igualmente rejeita a metapsicologia freudiana e centra a pesquisa e a cura psicanalíticas sobre problemas de amadurecimento pessoal e não mais sobre o complexo de Édipo. A terceira tese combina as duas primeira para dizer a) que a psicanálise winnicottiana satisfaz os requisitos de Heidegger para a patologia e a terapia daseinsanalíticas, b) que, além disso, essa nova psicanálise pode estimular de maneira decisiva a pesquisa futura no campo da antropologia daseinsanalítica.

Palavras-chave: Heidegger, Winnicott, Psicanálise, Paradigma, Metafísica.

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ABSTRACT

The paper proposes three main theses. The first thesis says that in Zollikoner Seminare Heidegger has developed a project of a daseinsanalytic anthropology and pathology in which he rejects Freud's metapsychology, but accepts his factual findings and therapeutic procedures. The second thesis affirms that Winnicott has introduced a new paradigm in psychoanalysis which also rejects Freud's metapsychology and centers the psychoanalytic research and therapy on the problem of maturation and no more on the Oedipus Complex. The third thesis combines the first two in saying a) that Winnicott's psychoanalysis satisfies Heidegger's requirements for a daseinsanalytic pathology and therapy and b) that, moreover, it can stimulate, in a decisive manner, the future research in the field of daseinsanalytic anthropology.

Keywords: Heidegger, Winnicott, Psychoanalysis, Paradigm, Metaphysics.

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1. The Line of Approach to the Topic

Heidegger is an outspoken critic of modern science and of psychoanalysis. Winnicott, in turn, defines himself as a scientist and psychoanalyst. It would seem that the only possible Heideggerian reading of Winnicott is to say that he objectifies the non objectifyable, and that the only Winnicottian attitude to Heidegger's existential analytic would be to declare it scientifically irrelevant.

I believe that this is the wrong way to think about the relation which might exist between Heidegger and Winnicott. On one hand, Heidegger rejects only the "absoluteness of natural science", Cf. Heidegger 1987, pp. 143 and 160. that is, its claim to exclusiveness over factual knowledge about whatever there is or might possibly be. His criticism does not amount to the proposal of stopping scientific research or of forgetting already existing scientific knowledge. He agrees with the common view that such knowledge is indispensable for the human kind. In criticizing Freud, Heidegger mainly rejects his metapsychology on the grounds that it is a theoretical construct produced within the framework of natural science which is inadequate for guiding research in human sciences and for dealing with difficulties of human life. This criticism notwithstanding, Heidegger accepts to a large degree of Freud's factual findings about pathological aspects of human behavior and even tries to translate them into his own "language of description of phenomena" (1987, p. 345). He also appreciates Freud's research and cure procedures very much. Thus, despite his sharp criticism of the dictatorship of the naturalistic paradigm² in human sciences, Heidegger does not reject the search for scientific knowledge as such nor the psychoanalysis as such. To the contrary, we shall see that he actually elaborated a project of a science of man (Wissenschaft des Menschens)³ and in particular of a scientific pathology and therapy to be developed within the framework of his own existential analytic.

If we now go over to Winnicott, we notice that he also abandons Freud's metapsychology together with its Kantian and naturalistic framework. Nevertheless, Winnicott continues to accept Freud's theory of neuroses and the interpersonal relationship as the essential moment of any cure procedure in psychotherapy, under one condition, however: that he be allowed to reinterpret them in the language which expresses his own view of human being. This view is centered on the idea of human being as a "time-sample of human nature" which goes on being and develops in a non-objective circular time. Simultaneously, Winnicott adds some very significant pieces to the traditional psychoanalytic theory⁴ and praxis. If we look closely at this twist, it appears that Winnicott changed the very paradigm of the traditional (essentially Freudian) psychoanalysis. Since the main factual findings of the Freudians are not abandoned but redescribed, we can say that Winnicott did not create a new science but rather that he introduced something that may be called "scientific revolution" into the discipline created by Freud.⁵

In framing his ideas or what we propose to call his "new paradigm", Winnicott leaned on the writings of some poets, theologians and philosophers. Shortly before dying, in the Preface to Playing and Reality, Winnicott stressed that his conceptualization of an "intermediate area" between the domain of subjective objects and objectively perceived objects, although neglected in the psychoanalytic literature, "has found recognition in the work of philosophers" (Winnicott 1971, p. XI). Earlier, in lectures printed in Human nature, Winnicott drew his audience's attention to the fact that the several scientific disciplines which study the early stages of the human emotional development owe to philosophy "the courage to proceed step by step towards better understanding of human nature" (1988, p. 151). In 1963, Winnicott underscored that "all the processes of a live infant constitute a going-on-being, a kind of blue print of existentialism" (1965, p. 86). Later on, in 1966, he conceded that instead of using the word "being" when speaking about the beginning of everything, with a baby he could use "the Frenchified word existing and talk about existence" as well. We can even "make this into a philosophy", says Winnicott, "and call it existentialism" (1988b, p. 12). Yet, one way or another, he adds, "we like to start with the word being and then with the statement I am", that is, by using the mother tong of the babies he is dealing with.

On other occasions Winnicott explained some of the reasons for his resistance to using the language of philosophers in describing human phenomena and his preference for the common language. In a text from 1961, he points out a "fault of existentialism", which consists in its liability to be used as "a sort of religion" by those who "are escaping into the present moment from their inability to relate to the past and the future" (1996, pp. 233-34). Winnicott's point is that existentialism forgets the time as an essential dimension of human being. In "Fear of Breakdown", he criticizes existentialist writings for another reason: for making existence "into a cult". Winnicott interprets this as an attempt "to counter the personal tendency towards a non-existence". Existentialism is faulty since it acts as an "organized defence" against a particular trait of human condition, namely, of the fact that "only out of non-existence can existence start". Cf. Winnicott 1989, p. 95 (the italics are in the original). In this case, the trouble is not with the oblivion of the temporality of human being but with the forgetting of the relation of being to non-being which is present in any human individual.

Since Winnicott never mentions any philosophers' names, we can only guess from his remarks that he is criticizing French existentialists. This interpretation is strengthened by the fact that R. D. Laing, who stood close to Winnicott in the years when his critical remarks on existentialism were written, was a reader and an outspoken follower of Sartre.Cf. R. D. Laing 1960. This said, we should keep in mind that Winnicott recognizes time and again that his own scientific studies of the continuity of human being stand close to the philosophical inquiries into human existence. It is thus only natural that in an effort to understand Winnicott better we try to identify philosophers whose thinking is concerned with the question of human being but who are not exposed to his objections in forgetting its temporal horizon nor its intimate relation to non-being.

For all I know, Heidegger's fundamental ontology satisfies these conditions. It is conceived as a study of the meaning of being in general within the horizon of "original" time and against the background of non-being. In Heidegger's Being and Time (1927), human being oneself is defined not by what we do or by what we are as social agents, but by the possibility of impossibility, i.e. by the possibility of not being in the world. This unworldly dimension of our nature constitutes, paradoxically, the backcloth of all possibilities of our being in the world. Since in Heidegger being means presence, it is the possibility of absence that gives the meaning to the presence and its various modes, not the other way round. Moreover, Heidegger distanced himself explicitly from Sartre's existentialism on the grounds that it neglects the question of the temporal meaning of being. Heidegger thus appears to be the philosopher to be taken into account when discussing intended or non intended philosophic references of Winnicott. Inversely, there are good reasons to say that Winnicott's new paradigm for psychoanalysis satisfies the basic requirements of a science of man as outlined in Being and Time and specially in Zollikoner Seminare. If this is so, and I think I can show it is, Winnicott's psychoanalysis can be seen as an unintended partial realization of Heidegger's project of a daseinsanalytic pathology and therapy.

This result opens new perspectives on the relation between Heidegger and Winnicott. Firstly, we may anticipate that Heidegger's fundamental ontology might help us clarify the philosophical presuppositions of Winnicott's psychoanalysis. Secondly, we are encouraged to think that Winnicott's views may be used, in turn, as a stimulus to complete and to articulate Heidegger's original philosophical project of a science of man in general, and of psychopathology in particular. Studying Winnicott may also stimulate daseinsanalytic research both on ontic and ontological levels. Indeed, Winnicott raises very important new "concrete problems" which may help elaborate the corresponding regional ontology of normal and pathologic anthropology as well as existential analytic itself. In addition, new developments in the psychoanalytic technique introduced by Winnicott may prove to be important for the progress of a scientific therapy oriented by Heidegger's existential analytic. Let us now develop each on of these perspectives.

 

2. Heidegger's Criticism⁶ of Modern Natural Science in Zollikoner Seminare⁷

According to Heidegger, a scientific theory in modern natural science "is a constructive assumption [Annahme] to the end of a consistent and continuous ordering of facts in a greater context, namely, in the pre-existing whole of nature" (1987, p. 198). Neither here nor, indeed, anywhere else in Zollikoner Seminare is Heidegger very specific about the nature of "consistent and continuous ordering of facts". Yet he has more to say about other elements of his definition. One of them is the constructive aspect of modern scientific theories. Theoretical constructions are disposed in two levels, the higher level of "assumptions" and the lower level of "suppositions". On the level of assumptions, constructions have the character of metaphysical projects or models of nature. The basic metaphysical model in natural sciences is the Newtonian concept of a "space-time system of mass points in movement" (p. 198). During the development of modern natural science, the Newtonian metaphysics of nature was itself embedded into still higher level " assumptions ". Among these, the Kantian "transcendental assumption of objectivity of objects" put forward in The Critique of Pure Reason (p. 169) plays a decisive role.⁸ Particularly important is Kant's thesis that the possibility conditions of experience are at the same time possibility conditions of objects of experience (p. 140).⁹ Another capital construct is the (transcendental) principle of causality (p. 28) - which itself is founded upon the principle of sufficient reason, enunciated by Leibniz - along with the transcendental principle of measurability of objets and of their properties (p. 119). Measurability, says Heidegger, belongs to the thing interpreted ontologically as an object (p. 128).¹⁰ In turn, measurability means calculability (p. 135). Both of these assumptions are necessary conditions of the production of objects (p. 128) and in that sense of our control and steering of nature (p. 136). This is why cybernetics is the paradigmatic form of modern natural science (p. 25).

The Newtonian mechanical and dynamic model of nature taken together with the Leibnizian and the Kantian general metaphysics functions as the general a priori constructive framework in which specific natural sciences formulate their own lower level "suppositions", that is, hypotheses, fictions or myths (pp. 160, 165, 218). Among these additional constructions, a special importance is attributed to certain so called "fundamental forces" - which are special types of cause - and to the idea of machine, that is, of mechanical organization of things, including man, along with many low level and less general causal hypotheses to be tested by experiments.

All these constructs taken together function as the basis for observation and description of facts as well as for realization of experiments. Scientific facts are always theory dependent and theory-laden (p. 328, 168). In particular, there are no metaphysics-free facts.¹¹ This way of constituting the object-domain of modern sciences and their theories also implies a specific way of viewing the description language and research method. The language used is conceived as conveying measurable, calculable information about objective matter of fact and as being, itself, a calculable object (p. 119). As to the method, it is the hypothetical-deductive and experimental method (p. 166-67).

From an epistemological point of view, says Heidegger, the results obtained by these two methods are no less fictional then the theoretical constructions which make them possible (p. 167). As to the relevance of these results, they are generally praised for being useful. Heidegger insists to say that, to the contrary, the knowledge produced by natural sciences in our epoch does not lead to any better future nor, even less, to the liberation of man but rather to his unlimited self-destruction (pp. 123, 160).

 

Heidegger's Criticism of the Freudian Psychoanalysis in Zollikoner Seminare

Heidegger's criticism of the Freudian psychoanalytic theory follows two tracks. The metapsychology is unacceptable because it transfers to the study of man, firstly, the Kantian theory of objectivity and, secondly, the paradigm of natural sciences (1987, p. 260). Due to the first move, Freud operates an unacceptable objectification of human historicity. This means that he views man as something merely present (vorhanden) in the world, just as one more example of effective reality (Wirklichkeit, p. 197).¹² By virtue of the second move, Freud naturalizes man as a causal process. Both normal and pathological phenomena are seen as results produced by hypothetical and mostly unconscious impulses and forces. The "psychoanalytic history of a human life", for instance, is no history at all, but "a natural causal chain, a chain of cause and effect, and moreover a constructed one" (p. 202).

At the same time, Heidegger recognizes that Freud has revealed a number of "ontic" phenomena - such as projection, introjection, identification, regression and repression - which are of great interest to any normal anthropology and pathology. Yet, in order to be used properly, these findings must be reinterpreted in the light of existential analytic and the corresponding regional ontology. Though Heidegger paid no attention to the Oedipus complex and its central role in the Freudian paradigm, he has shown great understanding of Freud's discovery of the fact that human beings may become ill through traumatic relationships with other human beings (p. 256). Again, traumatic events have to be treated as cases of existentially interpreted "being with others", taken in the Heideggerian sense explained in Being and Time, not as effects in the subject of his mode of relating to objects, which is part and parcel of the modern metaphysics of representation and its model of man's being in the world. The same applies to the Freudian discovery that psychic diseases can be cured through the relationship of patients with other human beings. Here again, Freud's very important concept of therapeutic value interpersonal relationship has to be understood as a particular mode of being-together, not as something like "transference" of affect or representations to a human "object" to be treated by the method of free association and verbalization (p. 210).¹³

Heidegger's criticism of Freudian psychoanalysis is far from being a pure and simple rejection. It consists rather of showing that, in spite of having produced major contributions to the science of man, Freud's psychoanalysis was unduly embedded in the tradition of modern natural sciences and of modern metaphysics of representation and that its factual findings should be reformulated within the ontological framework of existential analytic completed by the regional ontology of normal anthropology and of pathology.

 

4. Heidegger's Project of a Science of Man in Zollikoner Seminare¹⁴

As Heidegger was trying to explain the ontological structure of the human being and its relevance for a daseinsanalytic scientific psychiatry, some participants of the seminars met him with two severe objections. Firstly, the objection of hostility, namely, that Heidegger's existential analytic was hostile to science, to objects and to concepts (p. 147). Secondly, the objection of methodological inadequacy, which says that Heidegger holds an "old-fashioned view of the method of natural sciences" (p. 343).¹⁵

In his attempt to answer these objections, Heidegger put forward a philosophical project of a general science of man in agreement with his existential analytic. A daseinsanalytic scientific anthropology, he says, can be viewed as "the whole of a possible discipline vowed to the task to produce a connected presentation of demonstrable ontic phenomena of social-historic and individual Dasein" (1987, pp. 163-64). As any science, the daseinsanalytic anthropology should consist in "a systematic ordering". Ordering of what? Not of brute, empirical facts, but of "interpretations of experiences" gained by means of the hermeneutic method. Ordering of interpretations implies making classifications and considering human existence in modern industrial societies (p. 164). This "entirely new science" of anthropology still to be created would consist of a "normal anthropology" and would also include a "daseinsanalytic pathology".¹⁶

With the purpose of presenting a coherent picture of Heidegger's scattered remarks related to his philosophical project of a science of man, I shall try to show how they fit into Th. S. Kuhn's concept of scientific paradigm.¹⁷ My second objective is to examine to what extent Heidegger's project can contribute to what might be called a paradigm of a daseinsanalytic science of man.¹⁸

According to Kuhn, a factual science is characterized by a disciplinary matrix and by shared solutions of paradigmatic problems ("exemplars"). The disciplinary matrix of an empirical science consists of the following items: 1) leading generalizations¹⁹, 2) metaphysical model of entities belonging to the research domain, 3) heuristic rules²⁰ and 4) shared scientific values, including the shared conception of science and of aims of science.

Heidegger has never made any concrete proposal concerning leading generalizations in either normal or pathologic anthropology. This, by the way, is one of the reasons why I speak of Heidegger's "project" of a science of man and not of a Heideggerian "paradigm" of such a science. However, Heidegger did specify two main negative methodological and epistemological conditions which must be met by any scientific generalization put forward in the science of man: they must not be objectifying nor deterministic.

With the next item of the disciplinary matrix of the daseinsanalytic anthropology, the "metaphysical model" of man, Heidegger is much more at ease. He is in full agreement with Kuhn in saying that factual sciences are always developed with more general philosophical frameworks. What kind of framework is adequate in the case of anthropology? We already know Heidegger's answer: his existential analytic, presented in Being and Time, which however has to be enriched by appropriate derived existentials describing essential "regional" features of ontic phenomena. Now, Heidegger's existential analytic implies a "destruction" or a "deconstruction" of traditional metaphysical ontology, which sees man as a natural, objective entity. For this ontology Heidegger substitutes his own "fundamental ontology", which is a description of man's modes of being in the horizon of finite original existential time. The "model" of man arrived at in that manner is no more - as it is still in Kuhn - a " metaphysical" one, in the prevailing traditional sense, but a "post-metaphysical" one, in the new daseinsanalytic sense. The scientist guided by Heidegger's new idea of essence of man is invited to see and to interpret concrete human modes of being as manifestations of the underlying Dasein structure and not to make "assumptions" or to frame "suppositions" (be they meta-physical or meta-psychological)²¹ about hidden entities which are thought to causally explain these same phenomena taken as natural events.²²

As to the "heuristic models", which is the third main element of a disciplinary matrix, the procedure to be employed in producing a daseinsanalytic science of man should have the following characteristics. Firstly, it must be descriptive, not constructive or hypothetical. The daseinsanalytic scientific anthropology's descriptions of factual phenomena which appear in the lives of concrete human individuals must be based on an interpretation of the same phenomena within the horizon of concrete motivational contexts, without ever loosing from sight the regional and fundamental existentials by which they are "determined" and made visible (p. 256). Since the life of an individual is essentially a historic phenomenon, and since the existential time is circular, the movement of the understanding must be circular itself. From the methodological point of view, Heidegger's science of man is thus conceived as a special kind of descriptive, hermeneutic and historical factual²³ knowledge of man's being in the world.

As to the fourth item of the paradigm, the "shared values", the standard norms of natural science such as measurability, calculability or indeed producibility of specific modes of human or indeed of man himself are not even considered in Heidegger's project. Nor does Heidegger recommend looking, in the first place, for predictions, internal or external consistency, simplicity, empirical plausibility or indeed for any other "logical" value of the traditional factual science. The main values that should characterize a daseinsanalytic science of man are rather practical and even ethical: the good-health and the capacity to be somebody responsible for one's own modes of being.

This leads us to our final point, to what Heidegger has to say about "paradigmatic problems" which characterize factual sciences and guide the normal research. It is true that in presenting his general concept of a science of man, Heidegger could not possibly define its field by pinpointing concrete paradigmatic problems. Nevertheless, he does not seem to have been aware of the fact that particular scientific disciplines remain undefined as long as what Kuhn calls "exemplars" are not specified. As we have seen, Heidegger paid no attention to the Oedipus complex and to the central role which it played in the development of psychoanalytic research and therapy. In other words, Heidegger did not develop any specific conception of permitted or recommended ways of formulating and solving problems in daseinsanalytic anthropology as opposed to the naturalistic anthropology. This is an additional reason why his project falls short of being a paradigm.

Nevertheless, Heidegger has some important things to say about fundamental ontological features of the subject matter of problems of any daseinsanalytic anthropology. The basic data of these problems must be the difficulties of the "existing man" (p. 259). The central aspect of these difficulties is the limitation of capacity to be and to be free. All "disturbances" of human existence, sociological as well as medical, are of the same kind, namely, limitations of the liberty to be. Therefore, our solicitude (Fürsorge) with the others - which is the basic mode of interpersonal relationship - implies responsibility of letting others be and of letting them be independent. "We practice psychology, sociology, psychotherapy", says Heidegger, "in order to help people, so that they can achieve the aim of adaptation and liberty in the widest sense" (p. 199). The science of man does not aim at making of men objects of theoretical interest but at helping them in realizing their true nature. Becoming oneself seems thus to be the central feature of the "unknowns" of problems of any daseinsanalytic anthropological discipline²⁴

 

5. Heidegger's Existential Project of a Scientific Daseinsanalytic Psychopathology and Therapy

In Zollikoner Seminare, Heidegger dedicated a special attention to the daseinsanalytic psychopathology and therapy.²⁵ Here again we shall use the Kuhnian concept of paradigm in trying to organize Heidegger's ideas. They concentrate on the heuristic model and on the paradigmatic problems of the mentioned disciplines.

The relevant pathological phenomena are gathered, says Heidegger, in the "relationship between psychiatrist and the patient" (p. 342). This concrete analytic relationship must be seen as a way of being-together. Daseinsanalytic psychiatry has therefore the task of exploring and interpreting "medical" experiences which emerge in this specific existential mode of relating to other persons. The exploration of the relationship and corresponding experiences must be based on this "entirely new method" of involvement (Sich-ein-lassen, pp. 141 and 144).

The task of the exploration is solved by applying a special version of the hermeneutics, which Heidegger calls "hermeneutics of exploration". It presupposes "the horizon of medical experience" (p. 337) which allows a professionally, i.e. scientifically, conducted gathering of clinical facts (pp. 342, 343, 347, 352). One important positive instruction for this particular mode of seeing and understanding human data is the following: "The decisive point is that the phenomenal content of singular phenomena which appear in the relationship between the analysand and the analyst be brought to language in so far as they belong to the concrete patient in question and not simply subsumed under an existential in a generic manner [pauschal]" (p. 162). Accordingly, the hermeneutics of exploration does not produce interpretations directly in the horizon of the original time. Its horizon must be the circle of the concrete history of the individual Dasein under cure, i.e. his biography taken as a "derived" or "lower level" existential belonging to the regional ontology of psychiatry. This is this specific background of meaning which the analyst has to take as the framework of his interpretations (in addition of course to waster horizons of being in the world as such). If this is not done, ontic phenomena are either not seen at all or are appreciated only in so far as they contribute to the elucidation of ontological questions, not of medical questions. When this happens, the concrete individual existence is lost from sight and voided of its "factual content" (p. 257).²⁶

This implies that in order to duly appreciate the factual content, the daseinsanalytic pathologist has to have at his disposal a number of derived existentials which allow him to see and to interpret concrete biographic pathologic phenomena. Among these are existentials for health and illness, types of diseases, nature of diseases, pathological defenses and defense organizations. All of them must be clarified along with many others. Particular attention should be paid to the historic side of these existentials. In addition, the question of etiology has to be worked through. Concepts such as trauma must be explained. A full-fledged elaboration of genetic explanations is also highly needed. In short, all ontic phenomena met in the clinical relationship must be understood in the light of particular modes of being in the world, which make them possible. These existentials taken together form the regional ontology of psychiatry. For all I know, such an ontology was never developed by Heidegger, nor indeed by any of his followers (Binswanger, Boss).²⁷ It still remains a long overdue desideratum for the disciplinary framework of daseinsanalysis.

As to paradigmatic problems of a daseinsanalytic pathology, there is enough evidence that Heidegger expected daseinsanalytic pathologists to find, formulate and solve "ontic", i.e. factual problems of the kind treated by Freud and urged them to leave ontological questions to philosophers.²⁸ However, he was never very specific about which problems are to be taken as paradigmatic in particular fields of daseinsanalytic pathology. An example of Heidegger's difficulty to come to grips with concrete problems is found in a conversation between him and Binswanger, which took place in 1955. Binswanger asked Heidegger whether "the mentally ill are open to the being". Heidegger answered, yes, "for the mentally ill also have language". And he added that "in reading psychiatric clinical cases he has had often the impression that also in mentally ill persons emerges the concern about being [Besinnung auf das Sein]" (Binswanger 1994, p. 293). This remark is interesting in itself but obviously not precise enough in order to allow us relate to the question of being with clinical problems which are treated in psychiatry and in psychoanalysis. The absence of any articulated conceptualization of psychiatric problems in the light of existential analytic is another reason for not calling Heidegger's project of a daseinsanalytic pathology a scientific paradigm.

 

6. Winnicott's Revolution in Psychoanalysis Evaluated in the Light of Heidegger's Requirements on Scientific Anthropology

Let us now turn to Winnicott. I shall first characterize his contribution to psychoanalysis as a creation of a new paradigm for psychoanalysis and argue that this paradigm satisfies Heidegger's requirements for a daseinsanalytic science of man. In the next section, I shall try to show that Winnicott's psychoanalysis might have a stimulating effect on the development of a daseinsanalytic pathology and therapy.

I start by considering the changes which Winnicott has introduced in what can be called "disciplinary matrix" of the Freudian psychoanalysis. In the first place, Winnicott substituted Freud's leading generalization - his theory of sexuality - by an entirely different and original "working theory", namely, "the idea of a progression of dependence towards independence" within the process of emotional maturation. Winnicott is no more trying to produce "the statement of infantile and child development in terms of a progression of erotogenic zones" (1989, p. 194). He conceives the maturation of a human rather as a development which starts by what he calls "spontaneous gesture" whose source is the "potential True Self".

Let us be more specific about the maturational process. After the first feed, an "expectancy" is developed, a state of affairs "in which the infant is prepared to find something somewhere, not knowing what". At that moment he is ready to create: "The world is created anew by each human being, who starts on the task at least as early as at the time of birth [...]" (1988, p. 110). The creation of the world and of the first meanings of things help the infant to solve his first "existential" tasks: to integrate into space and time, to start dwelling in the body and to relate to "objects". The first object, the mother, has not yet the meaning of an external entity. The baby is the mother in the transitive sense of the word "be". He is neither really identical nor really distinct from the mother. In this state of almost absolute dependence, the common principle of identity does not apply to what is given in the baby's experience. Later on, the baby separates from the mother, which is a condition for his securing a sense of independence and of personal liberty. For that to happen, the infant must become able to destroy objects, to use them and to create a new sense of reality, the externality. Only after having achieved all this can he start feeling biological and in particular sexual drives as his own impulses. After that, further personal development can start, until death, "the last fact of life".

There are obvious and profound prima facie differences between Freud's theory of sexuality and Winnicott's theory of maturation. They are enough to say that Winnicott has changed the leading generalization of psychoanalysis and thus the first main element of the Freudian paradigm. Is this change acceptable to Heidegger? The best way of answering this question is to show that Winnicott's maturation theory satisfies both of Heidegger's general requirements on such generalizations, namely, the requirement of not being objectifying and of not being deterministic.

In order to decide whether the theory of maturation is objectifying and deterministic or neither of these, we may ask whether it treats human growth as a natural process. The clear answer is: it does not. Winnicott's maturational process is not, as is Freud's sexual development, the result of the activities of psychic forces (life and death instincts and their mixtures) within the psychic apparatus, but the manifestation of the human nature. "A human being", says Winnicott, "is a time-sample of human nature" (1988, p. 11). Human nature which is sometimes also called "essence of man" is endowed with a "growth potential" or an "integrative tendency" which "can bring the individual to his unit status" (1989, p. 244). While growing, the human being moves ahead driven by the need to continue to be and by all other needs that follow from this fundamental need which also belongs to the essence of man, mainly to be an independent self. None of these needs is to be found anywhere else but in the human nature.

As a matter of fact, these remarks are all based on Winnicott's ontology, the second part of what I call his "new paradigm". On one hand, in his picture of man the Freudian life and death instincts²⁹ as well as the mental apparatus are left out. On the other hand, Winnicott sees the human life as an interval which contains in itself its two ends: the initial state of unaliveness or of pre-dependence, and the "second death" or the return to the initial state of unaliveness. This interval is not so much like a line segment but rather like a circle which starts moving when the individual is experiencing his absolute solitude and stops when it returns to this same point, at the cost of losing "nothing less but everything".³⁰ The development of a man starts, says Winnicott, "in the state of the individual where the being emerges out of not being" and to which "every human individual, however old and with whatever experience, can return to start again" (1988, p. 131). Here is the place to recall Winnicott's idea quoted above that existence can start only out of non-existence as well as his considerations about spontaneity and its origins. Elsewhere, Winnicott describes the dawning of a human life as a moment at which "living arises and establishes itself out of non-living, and being becomes a fact that replaces not-being, as communication arises out of silence" (1965, p. 191). The point of origin of an individual is such that it can never become something factual and merely relational. It is not just that we can create the capacity of remaining isolate in our subjective world and non-communicating with the external reality. Winnicott's point is that each human being, even each human baby, is constantly concerned about his own initial state of pre-dependence, previous to any factual relationship whatsoever, and that, in addition, this initial state of absolute solitude and silence is the final point of the whole process of maturation (1989, p. 194).

When seen in the light of this "model", man is obviously not a natural entity. Nowhere in nature do we find a creature concerned about something like "essential solitude". It is equally clear that the concept of causality does not apply to human life conceived in that way either. Indeed, there is no possible causal chain between "not being " and "the fact of being", if these terms are used in the sense of Winnicott. There is an additional simple argument which proves these two theses: since the process of human growth creates the externality itself, that is, the very conditions of possibility for there being objective causal processes at all, it cannot itself be seen as an objective causal process. As Winnicott says, the place where we live our life is not a preexisting objective reality.

The inevitable conclusion is that Winnicott changes, in a radical way, both the leading generalization and the basic ontology of psychoanalysis. In Freud, the human development takes place in nature and obeys general natural laws, in particular, the law of causality (which assumes the form of the principles of pleasure and its extension, the reality principle). In Winnicott the coming to be of a person is due to the non causal need to be which can only come to fruition under equally non causal devoted presence of other human beings. The process of maturation is conceived as a human history, not as a natural deterministic sequence of events.

Winnicott's view of man and his coming to be a person differs not only from the Freudian one, but also from any traditional metaphysical model. No traditional metaphysics can make any sense of talking about man as a place where being becomes a fact and replaces not-being. Since Plato, the Western metaphysics accepts to talk about non-being only via negationis, that is, by considering it a privation of being, without ever acknowledging non-being as an independent original dimension. It would seem therefore that Winnicott's views are non-traditional in a very radical sense, inviting comparative studies with philosophies which definitely do not think about non-being from the vantage point of being but go the other way round, taking the being as an emergence out of non-being, ex nihilo. I say "emergence ex nihilo" and not "creation ex nihilo, because the idea of creation still preserves the preeminence of being or presence over non-being or absence. If I am right here, then Winnicott's description of human nature belongs to the conceptual landscape of non-metaphysical or perhaps I should say, post-metaphysical ways of thinking. For reasons hinted to in our first section (the idea that the possibility of absence constitutes the meaning of the presence) Heidegger is generally considered to be the first thinker in the whole Western tradition to try to open and to keep unveiled the dimension of transcendence. It would seem therefore that the first two items of Winnicott's paradigm - his leading generalization and his philosophic model of man - can very well stand the critical evaluation form the Heideggerian point of view. I also believe that, in addition, Heidegger can be used to achieve a better understanding and better articulation of the conceptual framework of Winnicott's work taken as a whole, a topic which puzzles so many of his readers.

Thirdly, Winnicott's heuristic rules are not the same as Freud's. Winnicott severely restricts the domain of application and the importance of free associations. He also rejects the Freudian fundamental rule as the universal method. In the case of psychosis, neither of these procedures apply. Winnicott also rejects speculative "auxiliary constructions", so German in their origin and so frequently used by Freud. He elaborates his views in a thorough British tradition, by careful description and interpretation of clinical and normal life phenomena, taking into account their place in the maturational process along the life-circle. By doing so he actually practices a special version of temporal hermeneutics of human facticity which takes into account the cicularity of human existence. The language employed by Winnicott is always the everyday English, whereby a special attention is given to the choice of words suitable to particular maturational phases. The reason for caution is that the adequate language for one phase of human growth is the wrong language for another phase (1988, p. 34). The complete description of human phenomena requires the use of different languages. Summing up, Winnicott's psychoanalysis appears to be a special kind of descriptive, interpretative (hermeneutic) and historical science of man.³¹

Fourthly, Winnicott changes the values and the concept of psychoanalytic science. It is not just the case that Winnicott does not pursue the general goals of natural sciences, those of measurability, of calculability or of producibility of phenomena. There is no doubt that the health and even ill-health of Winnicott's babies cannot be "produced" by any means, but is always a matter to be decided in the course of non causal relations of the baby with its human environment. But that is not all. In its essence, Winnicott's psychopathology has nothing to do with the reality principle nor indeed with the pleasure principle. The basic question for human beings is whether life is worth living no matter what it may cost, and not whether it is adapted to the external world or pleasurable. The quest for happiness, in particular, is not on the agenda of truly normal, healthy or mature persons. For such persons are precisely those who truly experience "the inherent difficulties of life" and their suffering is "probably the greatest suffering in the human world". It is a false guide in assessing degrees of human suffering "to observe manifest perplexity, misery and pain in a mental hospital" (1988a, p. 80). Accordingly, the main goal of a psychoanalytic treatment is not to help the mentally ill to become a happier person but "to have experiences, to build a personal ego, to ride instincts, and to meet with all the difficulties inherent in life". When all this feels real in the patient as in the life of a normal man, then he becomes "able to have a self that can eventually afford to sacrifice the spontaneity, even to die" (1958, p. 304). The last but perhaps impossible "act" of freedom is that of dying in the first person.

Finally, we come to Winnicott's paradigmatic problems and their solutions. While Freud takes as paradigmatic "three body problems" generated in children or adults in the triangular Oedipal situation, Winnicott's exemplars are unthinkable agonies, that is, "two body problems" which arise from dual relations between babies and their mothers.³² Whereas Freud's patients suffer from libidinal reminiscences, Winnicott's babies become ill due to interruptions of the continuity of being and to other needs which originate during the maturational process. The difference in the nature of problem situations is clear-cut and indicates, perhaps more decisively than any other item mentioned, the occurrence of a paradigm change.³³ Is this change acceptable to Heidegger? The answer seems to be yes, since Winnicott's two body problems are not thought to result from a conflict between instinctual forces, but from deficient modes of being together with others, that is, within the relationship of dependence which is constitutive of human beings.

There are thus good reasons to say that Winnicott has changed the disciplinary matrix and the shared examples of psychoanalysis. Since, at the same time, he preserved Freud's main empirical findings by translating them into his own language, it can also be said that Winnicott did not produce an entirely new science of pathology but a substantial progressive move in psychoanalysis itself, that is, a true scientific revolution in the discipline founded by Freud.

It must be conceded, however, that the foregoing remarks are only too schematic to be taken as final proof that there is a Winnicottian revolution in psychoanalysis, or that the Winnicottian paradigm agrees with Heidegger's existential analytic and satisfies the basic requirements contained in his project of a daseinsanalytic pathology and therapy. They give us, however, enough ground to submit both of these tenets to the further discussion and to propose that a more detailed investigation be undertaken in order to come to a final decision about whether there is something like a Winnicottian psychoanalysis and whether the psychoanalysis in Winnicott's new key can be viewed as an unintentional partial realization of a medically oriented scientific anthropology elaborated in a daseinsanalytic Heideggerian style.³⁴

 

7. One possible contribution of Winnicott's psychoanalysis to the development of the daseinsanalytic psychopathology and therapy, of existential anthropology and even to existential analytic itself

But there is more to be said about the relation between Heidegger and Winnicott. Just as Heidegger may be used to philosophically evaluate and articulate the Winnicottian paradigm, Winnicott's ideas may in turn be helpful in overcoming the lack of precision of Heidegger's project of a scientific psychopathology and therapy and in developing daseinsanalytic research in the fields of empirical or as Heidegger prefers "ontic" psychopathology, regional ontology of psychopathology and even of existential analytic itself.

Winnicott has made extremely important contributions concerning a great number of ontic, that is, factual problems, in particular those concerning the etiology of psychoses, especially of schizophrenia and borderline cases. All these problems must of course also be dealt with in any daseinsanalytic psychopathology. For all I know from the writings of psychopathologists influenced by Heidegger, this work is far from being finished and in many domains it has even not yet been started.

Moreover, Winnicott's contributions to the "science of man" may also stimulate the purely philosophical work on the nature of traumas, the essence of different psychic diseases, the reasons for the therapeutic virtues of being-together-with etc. In the terms of Heidegger, the factual results achieved by Winnicott require the search for still not clarified derived existentials which must necessarily lead to new developments in the regional ontology of psychopathology.

Finally, Winnicott's psychoanalysis raises legitimate philosophical problems that can only be answered on the level of existential analytic itself. Take, for instance, Winnicott's "admission" mentioned above that there is a "fundamental state" of human individual at which the being emerges out of non being and to which every human individual, however old and with whatever experience, can return to start again and be himself, that is, be a whole person. This way of looking at the structure of human life necessarily raises further philosophical questions about the nature of the birth and about the peculiar circularity which makes the unity of human beings possible. The same is true of Winnicott's results about the first human tasks, the constituting of the first subjective world, the first movements of being there, and many phenomena which occur in the other early phases of the growth. Since there is no possible causal explanation for these phenomena, the right place for discussing their nature or essence seems to be Heidegger's fundamental ontology and the right answers appear to require elaboration of new fundamental existentials.

The problems of clarifying the "essence" of the phenomena of being a whole person and of the birth are particularly important ones. Winnicott has provided enough factual evidence that a human individual may be prevented from going-on-being in the world and behaving in a healthy manner as a consequence of a bad start due to troubles related to his birth and to his initial "integration" with the mother. In Heidegger's terms, Winnicott's psychoanalysis deals with "ontic" problems which must be reinterpreted in the light of the fundamental existentials of being-to-the-beginning and being-a-whole. There is a passage in one of the final sections of Being and Time in which Heidegger addresses to precisely this problem-situation and recognizes that existential analysis which he presented in previous sections did not solve it at all. "Death", says Heidegger, "is just one of the ends by which Dasein's totality is closed around. The other 'end', however, is the beginning, the 'birth' of Dasein. Only that entity which is 'between' birth and death presents the whole which we have been seeking". Accordingly, concedes Heidegger, existential analytic which was oriented exclusively towards being-to-death "has so far remained 'one-sided'". Indeed, he continues, in the previous part of Being and Time "Dasein has been our theme only in the way in which it exists 'facing forward', as it were, leaving 'behind it' all that has been. Not only has Being-towards-the-beginning remained unnoticed; but so too, and above all, has the way in which Dasein stretches along between birth and death. The 'connectedness of life', in which Dasein somehow maintains itself constantly, is precisely what we have overlooked in our analysis of Being-a-whole" (Heidegger 1927, p. 373). For all I know, this part of existential analytic (fundamental ontology) was never completed by Heidegger or by anybody else.³⁵ It remains therefore a necessary task in any attempt of providing daseinsanalytic anthropology with a complete the philosophical "model" of man as part of its disciplinary matrix.

I would like to conclude by adding another example of how Winnicott's psychoanalysis can stimulate fundamental ontological research. It is an important factual finding of Winnicott's that "the philosophical meaning problem of the word 'real'" also "besets every human being". Still more significantly, this problem "is a description of the initial relationship to external reality" of the human infant at the time of the first feed (1988, p. 111). In case of a healthy baby, this problem is solved by means of an "illusion of contact". Babies with less fortunate experiences, says Winnicott, "are really bothered by the idea of there being no direct contact with external reality" (p. 115). They live under the "threat of loss of capacity for relationship" with the mother, and for them the philosophical problem of whether things continue to be or discontinue to be "becomes and remains [...] a matter of life and death, of feeding or starvation, of love or death" (p. 115). Even more unfortunate babies are those "whose early experiences of having the world properly introduced were confused" and who "grow up with no capacity for illusion of contact". Their capacity for encounter is so slight that it beaks down at the time of environment failure. These babies do no tend to develop philosophies about the meaning of the real but the schizoid illness (p. 115). It would seem that these descriptions of Winnicott's invite something very similar to what could be termed Heideggerian fundamental ontological interpretation of the babies with psychotic troubles as individuals who have ontic problems with the understanding of being.³⁶ We have pointed out above that his conversation with Binswanger Heidegger has expressed the conviction that the concern about being even emerges in mentally ill persons. But we have also seen that in 1955 he had very little to say about what that actually means. In the sixties, Heidegger had hopes that Boss's "rich medical experience" would show the necessity of using fundamental ontology when discussing the meaning of psychopathological phenomena.³⁷ As a matter of fact, Boss's writings produced under the influence of Heidegger, though overcrowded with fundamental ontological concepts, badly lack truly illuminating case stories which could stand comparison with Winnicott's hermeneutics of clinical phenomena.

There seems therefore to be enough evidence to say that Winnicott's view of human being as a time-sample of human nature, in addition to its own merits as a progressive paradigmatic development of the Freudian psychoanalysis, is worthy of consideration by all those who are interested in developing a science of man and of man's ill-health which would stand in agreement with Heidegger's fundamental ontology and be free of obvious defects which burden previous attempts to achieve this goal.

 

References

Binswanger, Ludwig 1994: Vorträge und Aufsätze. Ausgewählte Werke, vol. 3. Heidelberg, Asanger.         [ Links ]

Boss, Medard 1975: Grundriss der Medizin und der Psychologie. Bern, Huber.

Freud, Sigmund 1914[1901]: The Psychopathology of Everyday Life. London, Fisher Unwin.

Fairbairn, W. R. D. 1956: "A Critical Evaluation of Certain Basic Pyscho-Analytic Conceptions", in Fairbairn 1994, chap. 7, pp. 128-39.

___ 1994: From Instinct to Self: Selected Papers of W. R. D. Fairbairn. London, Jason

Heidegger, Martin 1927: Sein und Zeit. Tübingen, Niemeyer. (Engl. Translation: Being and Time, by J. Macquarrie and E. Robinson, N. York, Harper & Row, 1962.)

___ 1928/29: Einleitung in die Philosophie. Gesamtausgabe (GA) 27. Frankfurt a/M, Klostermann.

___ 1954: Vorträge und Aufsätze. Pfullingen, Neske.

___ 1957: Der Satz vom Grunde. Pfullingen, Neske.

___ 1987: Zollikoner Seminare. Frankfurt a/M, Klostermann.

Kuhn, Th. S. 1970: The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. Chicago, The University of Chicago Press.

Laing, Ronald D. 1960: Self and Others. London, Tavistock.

Loparic, Zeljko 1999: "Heidegger's Project of a Hermeneutic Anthropology", Memórias del XIV Congreso Interamericano de Filosofia, Puebla '99. Cidade de México, Associación Filosófica Mexicana (CD-Rom), 1999.

Vietta, Silvio 1989: Heideggers Kritik am Nationalsozialismus und an der Technik. Tübingen, Niemeyer.

Winnicott, Donald W. 1958: Through Pediatrics to Psychoanalysis. London, Karnac Books.

___ 1965: The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment. London, Karnac Books.

___ 1971: Playing and Reality. London, Penguin.

___ 1987: The Spontaneous Gesture. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.

___ 1989: Psychoanalytic Explorations. London, Karnac Books.

___ 1988a: Human nature. London, Free Association Books.

___ 1988b: Babies and Their Mothers. London, Free Association Books.

___ 1996: Thinking about Children. London, Karnac Books.

 

 

¹ This is an enlarged and revised version of a paper read at the IV the Forum for Daseinsanalysis, Zurich, May 6-8, 1999.
² I am using the term "paradigm" in a sense similar to the one proposed by Th. S. Kuhn (1970).
³ Cf. Heidegger 1987, p. 178. In Zollikoner Seminare, Heidegger does not speak any more of Geisteswissenshaften. He also considers, though only accidentally, the history of being (in particular the aspects of modern technological society) as important for the shaping of the science of man (pp. 163, 133, 96, 153, 353).
⁴ I am using here the term "theory" in a neutral sense, designing a scientific discipline in general.
⁵ Again, my usage of the term "scientific revolution" is based on that of Th. S. Kuhn. Roughly speaking, scientific revolutions tend to occur when unsolved problems or anomalies trigger the feeling of crisis among practitioners of the "normal research" guided by the existing paradigm of a scientific discipline. In such situations, younger members of the group initiate a "revolutionary research" which eventually ends with the conversion of the whole community to a new paradigm. In general, this collective Gestalt switch preserves the main empirical findings achieved in the old paradigm.
⁶ I speak of criticism and not of deconstruction because in Zollikoner Seminare Heidegger does not explicitly trace the origin of modern science back to man's relation to being.
⁷ This section is based on section 2 of Loparic 1999.
⁸ Kant would disagree with calling his theory of objectivity (the transcendental analytic of the understanding) an "assumption" or, even less, a "supposition". Heidegger himself, particularly in his second period, took a different view of the matter: Kant's theory of objectivity is not a human project at all, but a sending of the being. Here and elsewhere in the discussion with Boss, Heidegger is sticking to his positions explained in Being and Time. The reason might well have been the fact that this was the only work of Heidegger's known to some degree to Boss and other members of the Seminars in Zollikon.
⁹ This point was also made in Heidegger 1957, pp. 125, 134 and 183.
¹⁰ In other texts, Heidegger quotes M. Planck who says that, in science to be real (wirklich) means to be measurable (cf. Heidegger 1954, p. 58).
¹¹ In order to stress that there are no "pure facts", Heidegger quotes Goethe several times who says: "The highest thing to understand would be: everything factual is already theory" (Heidegger 1987, p. 328). When making descriptions we have to always take into account one theory or another, in the present case, the existential analytic of fundamental structures of human being.
¹² Some other Kantian themes are also relevant. Freud's theory of the three instances of the self - ego, id and superego -, for instance, is nothing other than different names for the three central concepts of Kant's theory of subjectivity, namely, sensibility, understanding and reason (or moral law). According to Heidegger, the permanence of the self is due to an entirely different source, namely, to the specific circularity of the human mode of being in the world (Heidegger 1927, p. 220).
¹³ Although Heidegger shows respect for Freud's therapeutic activity, he does not enter into discussion of basic episodes which according to Freud determine human destiny, in particular, of the Oedipal situation. Heidegger has also very little to say about other decisive situations, such as that of a baby being held by his mother.
¹⁴ This section is based on section 2 of Loparic 1999.
¹⁵ It was also felt as disturbing that Heidegger did not appreciate the practical benefits of scientific research (1987, p. 329).
¹⁶ More generally, Heidegger is looking for a new mode of thinking, of the kind which was already known to old Greeks but was forgotten later on (1987, p. 10).
¹⁷ The idea that Heidegger's view of science can be approximated to the Kuhnian was already defended by some other authors, cf. Vietta 1989, p. 26.
¹⁸ This same strategy shall be used later on in our discussion of Winnicott's contribution to psychoanalysis.
¹⁹ As he was working mainly with physics, Kuhn speaks of "symbolic generalizations". What he wants to discuss are statements which determine broad traits of the empirical subject matter and are commonly called natural laws or definitions. My term "leading generalization" tries to preserve the Kuhnian idea of empiricity and law-likeness of the statements in question without implying that they be formalized.
²⁰ I am dividing in two the second item of Kuhn's original exposition of the concept of disciplinary matrix, more sharply distinguishing between ontology and heuristics.
²¹ As we know, Freud coined the term "metapsychology" on analogy with the term "metaphysics" (cf. Freud 1914, p. 309). This point was nicely brought out in Fairbairn 1956, p. 130.
²² This anti-metaphysical stand is a constant in Heidegger's thinking. It is one of the reasons for Heidegger's irritation with Binswanger who accepts the idea of difference between the earthy world of care and the superior world of love.
²³ Following Heidegger, I avoid the term "empirical" and speak of "factual" and sometimes of "ontic" phenomena, problems, knowledge, etc. in order to avoid philosophical implications of the former term which would lead us back to the traditional metaphysical model of man and his cognitive experience.
²⁴ This idea of an anthropology is to be compared with the Kantian concept of moral anthropology as opposed to the physical one.
²⁵ Heidegger also speaks of a general "daseinsanalytic pathology" (1987, p. 164).
²⁶ Heidegger's concept of horizon implies that no one single act of seeing can see all phenomena which may manifest themselves on different ontic and on ontological levels.
²⁷ Boss has tried to do some of the work in his Grundzüge der Medizin und Psychologie (2nd ed. 1975). But he scarcely can be said to have advanced very much beyond Heidegger's own rare remarks on regional ontological problems of psychopathology scattered over Zollikoner Seminare.
²⁸ Cf., for instance, Heidegger 1987, p. 257.
²⁹ In a letter to the Kleinian R. Money-Kyrle, from January 1953, Winnicott says that the theory of "life and death instincts" is a "blunder" of Freud's. He also complains about the fact that the term "death instinct" is "abused" in the British Psychoanalytic Society and employed improperly "instead of the word aggression or destructive urge or hate" (cf. Winnicott 1987, p. 42).
³⁰ I am quoting one part of a verse by T. S. Eliot which Winnicott used as the title of his unfinished autobiography (cf. Winnicott 1989, p. 4).
³¹ Freud's psychoanalysis also has a hermeneutic methodological component. Nevertheless, Freud's hermeneutics differs in at least two aspects from the Winnicottian. Firstly, its horizon of interpretation is the history of sexual development, not the history of personal development. Secondly, it allows for completion by theoretical constructs in terms of instinctual forces, which Winnicott explicitly forbids.
³² Following J. Rickman, Winnicott makes a fundamental distinction between "three body problems" which originate, as does, for instance, the Castration Complex, in "three body relations", that is, in relations among three or more whole persons, external to each other, and "two body problems", exemplified by unthinkable anxieties, which have their place of origin in the "two body relationship" of the infant and the mother, that is, in very early stages of the history of the individual where ideas of whole person and of externality do not apply (cf. Winnicott 1965, p. 29).
³³ It should be reminded that the revolutionary change of exemplars of a scientific discipline does not mean that old paradigmatic problems are no more taken into account, but only that they no more define the discipline in question. In Winnicott, the Oedipus complex is still a relevant problem, but it can no more be used to teach the essentials of psychoanalysis nor as the main guide of therapy and research.
³⁴ Having been developed independently of Heidegger, Winnicott's psychoanalysis is not plagued by misconceptions of his work which disturb the reader of the writings of Binswanger and even of Boss, which is another great advantage.
³⁵ In a later text (1928/29, GA 27, pp. 123-26) Heidegger touched once more, but again very briefly, on this issue and made some very interesting remarks on it.
³⁶ Here we must keep in mind the fact that the "ontic distinction" of Dasein is "to be ontological" (Heidegger 1927, p. 12).
³⁷ Cf. Heidegger's letter to Boss from December 29, 1967 (Heidegger 1987, p. 352).