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| The Special Enough Child?
A patient says (in so many words), "I know I'm not the center of your universe and not the only person to whom you're important... but I can still feel Special Enough to trust this process we are in together and allow it to help me without undermining things." Clearly the analyst has created a holding environment and is behaving as a Good-Enough mother. But what processes are actually at play in the patient?
Winnicott's good-enough mother is by now quite usefully ubiquitous. But I wonder what exists, qualitatively, on the other side of the dyad. A special-enough child? With so much focus on the interrelatedness of mother/child throughout early development, surely the presence of a good-enough mother is not the sole guarantee of success. Neither does not-quite-good-enough mothering doom every child to the same sealed fate. So what are the achievements and contributions of the child with (and without) good-enough mothering? What is her experience? At the other side of symbiotic merger, does the child perceive coming into her own existence? Winnicott says the infant goes from requiring a mother-person's full-time presence simply to exist ("there is no such thing as a baby") to an awareness of dependence on an object who must be shared with others. That seems a rather challenging leap, one requiring both intraspychic and relational scaffolding for safe passage. How does the child let go of the idea that its own wishes for things (including for a perfect mother) makes them so? How does she grasp that it is mother's choice to meet her needs, and how might it come about that such awareness does not wipe out or subsume the child's agency in wanting? Perhaps there is something about feeling she is special-enough to her good-enough mother to risk the transitions towards increasing autonomy. Being too special leaves the child no room to see herself as effective (all good is the work of the Perfect Mommy - I can't be trusted to get anything that right). Being not special enough keeps the child imprisoned in a non-responsive environment, where there is no evidence that wishes initiate or deserve met needs, and thus no sense of being worthy.
(I'd be happy to know about writers who take up this perspective, and/or of concepts I may have misread!) --Priscilla Butler
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Ah, nice questions, Priscilla! What's good enough? What's special enough? In re mother's and children of course-- but in so many things.
I frequently have adult patients trying to decide if their boyfriend, girlfriend, lover, spouse is good enough. People, that is, relatively healthy non-narcissists-- seem to have long ago given up on the idea of having a perfect other--or being a perfect self. But what's good enough? It takes exquisite attention to the details to decide what's acceptable and what's not. Not to mention courage--having the nerve to take a serious look. What kind of demand is it reasonable to make?--on mothers, on children, on friends and lovers? On one's self?
It may be that all of psychoanalysis is about deciding what's good enough.
Henry Seiden
What's good enough? For Winnicott, prior to any good/bad splits, there is a "pre-primitive" stage of development in which the infant is dependent without ever realizing it is dependent. He refers to this "double dependency"...what he understands as a necessary "primary narcissism"...akin to the state of unintegration which he encourages his analysand's to enter into...a state in which their going-on-being is not interrupted such that they become predominantly "reactive" beings...as necessary for the eventual weaning from the absolute dependence of the infant. Even the birth experience can be overly traumatic in interrupting the continuity required for healthy emotional development. Perhaps those who "can't decide" are reaching back to this gap in their development and are unwilling (unable?) to move forward until they have recovered some of this early traumatic experiencing which they did not have the capacity to experience at that time. (See "The Psychology of Madness" in Psychoanalytic Explorations). Can we say that "autonomy" can even exist without dependence and dependence responded to by "the devoted mother"? And when does withdrawal masquerade as "autonomy" and "independence"? How can one be "aware" of dependence without having undergone the experience of being dependent or being thwarted in one's dependence? And how are the impacts of these early experiences being played out in one's current life? Priscilla, these questions may open up the ground for some of the later questions you are posing.
Larry Wetzler
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