Winnicott’s delinquent

Abstract

“The Antisocial Tendency”, a paper given before the British Psychoanalytic Society in 1956, is neither Donald Winnicott’s first nor last word on the subject of delinquency and antisocial behaviour. Winnicott had thus not only trained in medicine and specialized in paediatrics but had completed his psychoanalytic training and was commencing the further two years of supervised child and adolescent work necessary to become a child analyst at the Institute of Psychoanalysis. In “The Antisocial Tendency” Winnicott’s young training patient is sent to Approved School. Winnicott emphasizes that the antisocial tendency both stems from deprivation and contains a sense of hope. Winnicott emphasizes that the antisocial tendency both stems from deprivation and contains a sense of hope. The “cure” for Winnicott lies in the finding of object love, the capacity to engage with an attuned adult, and the capacity to feel despair as well as hope, to mourn.