ABSTRACT
This paper was read by Winnicott to the New York Psychoanalytic Society, on November 12, 1968 and published in the International Journal of Psycho-Analysis in 1969, two years before he died. In this paper, Winnicott presents the process whereby an infant begins to discover an inside and an outside to himself, and to the other who occupies the outside. Winnicott distinguishes between object relating—relating to objects created by the infant’s fantasy, and within his omnipotence, and object usage—relating to objects that have a real existence external to him. He highlights the cruciality of the mother’s survival of the infant/subject’s attempts at destruction of the object external to him, and the importance of this process in the work of psychotherapy.
