ABSTRACT
Donald W. Winnicott provides new knowledges in psychoanalysis, first of all in introducing a new knowledge of knowledge. Implicitly, his work calls into question the rules of formal logic that allow us to give a status of truth to our theoretical propositions. Winnicott relies on this "absurd unlogic" to elaborate his work. The paradigm of complex thought substitutes ternary thought for traditional binary thought. Ternary thought is, indeed, the ferment of Winnicott's views on the unconscious. In this conceptual frame, all notional duality requires a triadic principal, including the connotation of an absent third notion. Winnicott was explicit in disagreeing with Freud about the death drive. This open disagreement had the unfortunate consequence of leading to an underestimation of Winnicott's paradoxical contribution to the notion of a death drive. Winnicott's work has alerted us to the traumatic potential inherent in a primitive/immature mind confronted with immoderate intense tension.
