ABSTRACT
The collection of unpublished talks, published posthumously in 1987 and entitled Babies and Their Mothers, brings together Donald Winnicott’s presentations specifically about the time of the infant’s very beginning—namely, the time of absolute dependence, the mother is in a state of primary maternal preoccupation. The healthy infant establishes a sense of self and a sense of “going-on-being”. This can occur only in the appropriate setting—the one the mother who is in a state of primary maternal preoccupation is able to provide. Primary maternal preoccupation is the early specialized environment. The mother in this state is healthy and good enough and able to offer a facilitating environment in which her infant may be able to be and to grow. The main point that Winnicott wishes to get across with his thesis of primary maternal preoccupation is that infant and mother are psychologically merged from the beginning of the infant’s life.
