ABSTRACT
The feeling states between mother and infant from the beginning constitute "communication" and "mutuality". D. W. Winnicott differentiates between certain qualities of communication that vary according to each stage of the infant’s development. In health, the incommunicado self must never be communicated with but if communication “seeps through”, a violation occurs, and the individual must set up a defence system to seal and protect the core/true self. For Winnicott, mutuality belongs to preverbal communication: From birth a baby can be seen to take food. Having established the difference in quality between communication in babies and further on in emotional development, Winnicott delineates two types of non-communication: Two opposites of communication are: a simple not-communicating and a not-communicating that is active or reactive. The complex notion of the ability to create a self-division between non-communicating and communicating in health is linked with Winnicott’s thesis of violation of the self.
