ABSTRACT
The detailed functioning (or dysfunction) of the actual mother in the past became Winnicott’s continuing focus in his late period. Influenced by his paediatric work, the evidence for the power of the mother’s psyche was evidenced by the transference-countertransference matrix of analytic work. In his final formulations he proposed five stages that depicted the infant’s evolving awareness from apperception to perception. This was offered, Abram suggested, as an alternative concept to the Freudian and Kleinian “death instinct”. Primary aggression for Winnicott was initially benign and evolved in relation to the mother’s psyche.
