The 'good enough' mother
Witness History
BBC
4.5 • 1.6K Ratings
🗓️ 13 November 2020
⏱️ 11 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
Psychoanalyst and paediatrician Donald Winnicott helped shape childcare in Britain through a series of BBC radio broadcasts in the 1940s and 50s. He suggested mothers did best when they followed their instincts, got to know their babies and ignored prescribed rules. He became most famous for developing the idea of what he called ‘the good-enough mother’. He also introduced the term 'transitional object' to describe the favourite teddy that babies cling to, He suggested it represented an important phase of development, helping babies develop a sense of self, separate from their mothers. Claire Bowes has been speaking to retired psychoanalyst Jennifer Johns, who knew Donald Winnicott.
PHOTO: A mother with her baby in the 1960s. Credit: BBC.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Choosing what to watch night after night the flicking through the endless |
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| 0:11.8 | telly we share what we've been watching |
| 0:14.0 | Cladie Aide. |
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| 0:19.0 | Lovely. Off the telly with me Joanna Paige. |
| 0:21.0 | And me, Natalie Cassidy, so your evenings can be a little less |
| 0:24.9 | searching and a lot more auction listen on BBC sounds. |
| 0:30.9 | Hello and thanks for downloading witness history from the BBC World Service with me Claire Bose. |
| 0:39.2 | Today we're remembering a man who helped women understand babies through psychoanalysis. |
| 0:46.0 | Donald Winnicott had his own BBC series in the 1940s and 50s and became most famous for developing |
| 0:52.2 | the idea of what he called the good enough mother. |
| 0:56.0 | I've been speaking to someone who worked with him. |
| 0:58.0 | Mothers and babies are round very strong feelings in everybody. |
| 1:03.0 | In a child development itself has always been something that people get very worked up about. |
| 1:09.0 | Jennifer Johns is from a family of psychoanalysis. |
| 1:13.3 | Her parents knew Donald Winnicott, |
| 1:15.4 | and she also trained with him herself. |
| 1:17.7 | And so my father knew him professionally, |
| 1:20.2 | referred to him as the small genius. Perhaps it's important to say that Winnicott was physically very small. |
| 1:27.0 | And as you can hear from the BBC lectures, he had quite a high voice. |
| 1:31.0 | In the following talks, I shall be deliberately trying to put into words what a mother does |
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