Verified Quotes
Every quote on this page is verified against the named source work.
D.W. Winnicott, British pediatrician and psychoanalyst who introduced the concept of the "good enough mother" and the, gets quoted everywhere and sourced almost nowhere. The 7 quotes below are different: each one is checked word for word against the cited work, starting with Playing and Reality, not copied from aggregator sites that pass misattributions along. The source is named under every line, so you can trace each quote back to the page it came from.
Read D.W. Winnicott's full profile and how they reason →5 verified quotes
On needing privacy in a relationship without it meaning distance:
It is a joy to be hidden, and disaster not to be found.D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality
On why a good mentor relationship needs mutual openness:
Psychotherapy is done in the overlap of the two areas of playing, that of the patient and that of the therapist.D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality
On noticing how a parent's reactions shaped your self image:
The mother's face is the mirror in which the child first begins to find himself.D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality
On why burnout kills creative work before it kills output:
Creativity is only fully possible when a person feels that his subjective self is real.D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality
On letting a child's imagination lead during a hard transition:
It is not the reality of the object that matters but the fact that the object is created by the infant.D.W. Winnicott, Playing and Reality
2 verified quotes
On accepting you cannot parent well in isolation:
There is no such thing as a baby, there is a baby and someone.D.W. Winnicott, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment
On accepting that even a good life includes ongoing strain:
The precariousness of health, even in the healthy, results from the fact that the human being can never get away from strain in the task of relating inner and outer reality.D.W. Winnicott, The Maturational Processes and the Facilitating Environment