ABSTRACT
D. W. Winnicott speaks of an unknown core and also an unknown background. Possibly, also, a boundless aspect to the core supported, boundless incommunicado core of ongoing being supported by boundless unknown God. One of Winnicott's special contributions to the meaning of unknown background is that the emerging individual lacks awareness of the environment that supports it. Winnicott calls this state "a primary state of being", a "pre-primitive" stage of development. Pre-primitive partly to differentiate it from the wealth of "primitive" states developed by Melanie Klein and her followers. A sense of continuity of being in time is a primary state for Winnicott, and for its emergence and evolution it requires devoted helpers whose help remains unacknowledged as such. Terms that might be associated with this state, primary narcissism or autism, are often maligned, devalued, or pathologized. An implicit background in being, not a figure with conceptual clarity. Aloneness as a sense of continuity of being in time.
