ABSTRACT
This chapter draws upon Winnicott to offer a new perspective on care and its discontents. Specifically, the question of why the so-called care crisis afflicting affluent Western societies seems to persist despite itself, and particularly despite growing awareness among care workers of their degrading work conditions, is explored through the use of Winnicott’s concept of the “caretaker self.” Defined as a version of the false self formed in response to an impoverished environment, and particularly one devoid of adequate care, the caretaker self is marred by a compliant orientation toward the world and essentially becomes what the other needs them to be, namely a provider of care. To pursue this line of thought requires an examination of the links between work life and early life, and particularly the home environment where a relational failure between caregiver and child arises due to the intensifying pressures of work coupled with crumbling care resources. The chapter concludes with exploring Winnicott’s thinking on the capacity to be alone, which is constitutive of the capacity to not care in the presence of the other, and therefore a platform for building more sustainable forms of mutual caring.
