ABSTRACT
This chapter explains Donald Winnicott's scientific bent and Heidegger was decidedly skeptical of the potential of science and technology to advance human understanding. Winnicott said that initially the care factor resides with the mother and her "primary preoccupation" with the infant. But it could be argued that the infant's attempt to manage his own annihilation anxiety is a precursor of care in Heidegger's sense. Winnicott observes that the child eventually wears out and sometimes destroys the transitional object, tearing it apart, forgetting about it, or denying its significance. Moreover, he maintains that what assures children of their continued existence is to mentally destroy their caregivers in fantasy. The teddy bear is truly metaphysical, a material reality or "substance" that is simultaneously a creation of human thought. The teddy bear allowed Winnicott to straddle the existentially vulnerable heart and the playful, resilient, and sometimes penetrating world of the mind and the many objects, memories, and visions that inhabit lives.
