Between Winnicott and Lacan: Reclaiming the Subject of Psychoanalysis

Winnicott and Lacan, two towering figures of twentieth-century psychoanalysis, seem to represent distinct pathways in the clinical and theoretical evolution of the field after Freud. Winnicott was a developmentalist whose ideas about the psyche grew in large measure out of his work with infants and young children, while Lacan's were the fruit of his practice with adults and his study of structuralism and linguistics. Despite their divergent vocabularies, however, Winnicott and Lacan shared an interest in the nature and origins of the human subject and in the problems of sustaining a separate self. Moreover, they both saw a creative process as central to subjectivity and to the effective treatment of the psychic problems that arise when it is damaged. This paper argues for a complementary or dialectical reading of their approaches that can contain both the relational and intersubjective dimensions of psychoanalytic practice and that offers a way of understanding the underlying systemic factors in language and fantasy.