ABSTRACT
The first environment for the infant is mother, and at the beginning they are merged together in an environment–individual set-up. The facilitating environment enables the individual to take the opportunity to grow and will usually lead to health, whereas the emotional environment that fails, particularly in the beginning, is more likely to lead to mental instability and ill health. There are two crucial aspects concerning Winnicott’s observations at this time in psychoanalytic development. First, through his extensive work with mothers and infants D. W. Winnicott had by discovered the difference between a good environment and one that is not good. Second, he observed that this essential first good environment is duplicated in the Freudian setting, which, of course, includes the personality of the analyst. The holding environment therefore has as its main function the reduction to a minimum of impingements to which the infant must react with resultant annihilation of personal being.
