ABSTRACT
Several analysts added to Melanie Klein’s account of the baby by bringing a particularly careful attention to how the mother is able to help her baby–and the effect on him when she is less able to do so. Donald Winnicott’s experience was as a paediatrician working with young children and their mothers, as well as an analyst. He describes how, when all goes well in the earliest days of her infant’s life, the mother attunes herself sensitively to her baby, allowing him the illusion that he is merged with her. Many babies have an attachment to a soft toy: one which can represent the mother but that is not her, one who can be loved and clung to–and also safely hated, beaten up and abandoned. The baby needs his mother and her love for him to survive his attacks on her: his greedy, loving ones and his frustrated and envious ones.
