Donald Woods Winnicott (1896– 1971) was an English pediatrician, psychiatrist, sociologist and psychoanalyst. He completed his medical studies in 1920, and in 1923 he obtained a post as physician at the Paddington Green Children's Hospital in London, where he was to work as a pediatrician and child psychoanalyst for 40 years.
In his work with psychologically disturbed children and their mothers, Winnicott developed some of his most influential theoretical concepts, allowing him to construct his vision of what psychotherapy should aim to achieve. Central to understanding the notions of his view of object relations and the ideal therapeutic holding environment, are the notions of subjective omnipotence, objective reality, the transitional object and the transitional experience. In a person’s development these are extremely important because according to Winnicott, the effects of these stages span vastly beyond infancy and explain adult dysfunction: an autistic or self-absorbed individual remains in the subjective omnipotence phase, while a person superficially adjusted but not unique or passionate has not progressed past their objective reality.
The transitional experience is, therefore, crucial to a person’s development, as it allows them to connect their self-expression with the subjectivity of others. It is at this point that a child progresses from the symbiotic relationship with their mother to individualization and departs from both purely subjective and purely objective points of view.
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