ABSTRACT
This chapter builds on notions of mirroring and identification to consider the environment within which the mirroring takes place. I will draw on the work of the psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott to look at the context within which individual exchanges in classrooms occur. Winnicott’s understanding of identification and ego formation is somewhat different from Lacan’s but the divided, defended self and the dynamic unconscious remain at the heart of a Winnicottian version of the human condition. In particular, this chapter uses Winnicott’s notion of the holding and handling environments, the maternal facilitating environment, to explore some effects of accountability on the learning environment.
