Analytic Idealizations and the Disavowed: Winnicott, His Patients, and Us

Abstract

This paper explores the dynamics of mutual idealization within the analytic dyad. While the subject of idealization is not a new one, very little has been written about the analyst's own participation in patients' idealizations or her vulnerability to idealizing the patient. I use both published and unpublished materials to muse about coconstructed idealizations as they appear to have coalesced in Winnicott's treatment of Masud Khan and Harry Guntrip. Because the notion that we might be involved in being idealized by our patients—or in idealizing them—collides with our professional vision, we tend to be highly resistant to acknowledging these dynamics and often turn to denigration when they are unmasked. I argue for the ubiquity of idealization's dynamics and against the demonization of Winnicott.

Acknowledgments

I am grateful to Sue Grand and Adrienne Harris for their remarkable generativity; Linda Hopkins, Dodi Goldman, and Roger Willoughby for their generous contributions to the historical aspects of this paper; Teresa Lopez-Castro for her assistance in researching the Winnicott Archive, Annee Ackerman, Dafna Fuchs, Natasha Stovall, Leora Trub, and my son, Jesse Rodin, for their astute editorial eyes.

Notes

¹My psychoanalytic world is American—relational, object relational, and Freudian. Most of my interpersonal colleagues do not share my love of Winnicott. He also has had vocal critics among some American relational writers (and, of course, among members of the British Society). And although readers of this journal do not all revere Winnicott, I suspect that we all revere someone. This other psychoanalytic giant, perhaps Freud, Klein, or Lacan, provides an alternate analytic ideal toward which to aspire and confronts us with the dynamics I describe here (Slochower, 2006b).

²Diethelm Library, Institute for the History of Psychiatry, Weill Medical College of Cornell University.

³Concurrently, I participated in presentations about Khan and Winnicott with Dodi Goldman and Linda Hopkins that further stimulated my thinking.

⁴For the analyst in training, this idealization often organizes around therapeutic competence: “You are a better analyst than I will ever be.” And I would add, this same dynamic sometimes plays out within the supervisory context.

⁵ Willoughby (2005), Hopkins (1998, 2006), and Goldman (2006) have all explored Khan's gradual deterioration as an analyst in the context of an extensive study of his personal and professional life. Their work and subsequent discussions of the Godley affair by Boynton (2005) complicate any unidimensional indictment of Khan. Khan wrote sensitive and rich clinical books and introduced Winnicott's own work with delicacy and, it seems, love.

⁶In fact, Hopkins reported that Charles Rycroft (as cited in Hopkins, 2006, p. 143) is “100% sure” that Khan “literally wrote” several of Winnicott's papers. This was supported in Hopkins interview of IJPA secretary Ann Jameson, who recognized Khan's handwriting on Winnicott's manuscripts. (Willoughby (personal communication) disagrees, believing that Winnicott would never have permitted this and that Khan acted as editor rather than ghost writer.)

⁷In this widely discussed incident, Little breaks a vase of Winnicott's, and he leaves the room for the duration of the session, returning only at the end. He replaced the vase without discussing what happened (Little, 1990).

⁸It is possible that this idealization was sexualized—that disavowed homoerotic longings found their way into an erotically tinged admiration for Khan.

⁹Of course, we cannot identify what Winnicott actually felt from these letters. It's quite possible that only some of his feelings about Khan found their way into them.

¹⁰ Winnicott concludes the letter by also recommending his patient Margaret Little: “I would also like to remind you that Margaret Little could be valuable to you.”

¹¹Did Khan express genuine admiration for Winnicott here, a longing for a parental relationship with him, or “false self” expressions of admiration, the quid pro quo felt to be required of Khan as Winnicott's protégé?

¹²Eigen suggests that had Guntrip's treatment gone on long enough, the tensions sidelined by the mutual idealization would have become uncontainable and broken into, or broken up, the treatment process. But, sadly, it did not.

¹³Willoughby (personal communication, May, 2007) has suggested that Khan's report of this and other interactions between himself and Winnicott cannot be relied on. He and Judith Issroff believe that Khan's Work Books are far from accurate reports of actual interactions, and instead are replete with Khan's playful (or destructive) lies.

¹⁴ Willoughby (2005) underscores the role of lieutenancy and pseudo-mentorship in sustaining this idealization.

¹⁵According to Hopkins (2006), Winnicott did not sufficiently remind Khan of his idealized father and was far too undignified for Khan's taste.

¹⁶In this context, Winnicott's desire to collaborate with his very talented patient Khan might be read as an example of the invasion of analytic self-interest, a phenomenon with which we are all familiar.

¹⁷Psychoanalytic writers have tended to emphasize the inherent opposition between idealization and recognition since the idealized other is, inherently, unseen. Yet Benjamin (1988, 1995) suggests that this is not an intrinsic opposition because idealization may be a crucial precursor to, and facilitator of, the experience of mutual recognition.

¹⁸ Frankel (2003) suggests that the analyst's unconscious rebellion against the ideal can even provoke professional delinquencies.

¹⁹Many such “rules” were routinely disregarded in this period of psychoanalytic history.